

m 











^B. 



I LI BRARY OF CONGRE S S. 

f [SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT.] 

I <&+. BX<2>7 

! UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ESSAYS 



BY 



THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 

it 



(SECOND SERIES 



6o(j0. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY. 

M.DCCC.LVI. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

Theophilus Parsons, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS 



Page 
THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL ... 1 

THE SENSES 49 

THE MINISTRY OF SORROW . . . * .115 

THE SABBATH 149 

THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY 215 

DEATH AND LIFE 255 



NOTE 

The first series of my Essays was published ten years ago ; and 
these have been written at various periods since. They are now pub- 
lished, after a long delay, from a conviction that it is not right to 
withhold what may do some good, only because it cannot do much. 

No systematic exposition of the doctrines of the New Church is 
attempted in either volume. The topics discussed with more or less 
fulness in these several essays are distinct and different. They are, 
however, connected ; and there may seem to be much repetition, to 
those who do not know the interdependence of the leading doctrines of 
the Church. That which relates to the universal Father is the centre 
of all truth ; and other doctrines, as that concerning His Word ; and 
that concerning Life, which should be governed by His Word ; and 
that concerning another world in which Life is continued and de- 
veloped, lie near the centre. Begin where we may, with any topic or 
any treatment of it, every attempt to present it accurately leads us 
towards these doctrines, as necessarily as the radii of a circle point to- 
wards its centre. Every essay, therefore, contains statements of these 
doctrines, or allusions to them. It would have been easy to have les- 
sened the appearance of sameness ; but it was thought better to permit 
all these views to present themselves to the mind of the reader in the 
same way and in the same connection in which they occurred to the 
mind of the writer. In one sense there is little repetition ; for the same 
thing must present a different aspect when seen from a different point 
of view, or in a different relation. It was indeed thought that it might 
not be useless thus to exhibit the fact, that all religious truth flows 
from and returns to these central and universal doctrines ; and to show 
how either of them, as its face is turned towards one or another dis- 
tant or particular truth, throws upon it especial illustration, and re- 
ceives from it new proof and confirmation. 

T. P. 

Cambridge, Julv. 1856. 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 



All knowledge that the Seeming is not the Actual, is a 
discovery. The infant sees, hears, touches, and believes. 
In the beginning of human experience all things are equally 
true and equally real, and all objects are equally near. 
The moon is no farther from the cradle than the lamp. 
Persons born blind have received sight in after years from 
a surgical operation ; and although they have previously 
learnt much of the relation of place by the experience of 
touch and motion, and although the process by which they 
learn to see things in their right places is usually brief and 
rapid, this is still a necessary process. With those who are 
born in possession of all their senses, this same process is 
so far completed before memory begins, that we have little 
or no recollection of it, and are seldom conscious of it after- 
wards. There is, therefore, a certain amount of correction 
of the Seeming which is common to all men. It is finished 
in early childhood ; and, while itself forgotten, it becomes 
thenceforth the basis of all further progress. 

This progress continues through life in a great variety of 
forms. The most ignorant and degraded races — the na- 
tives of Australia or Patagonia — acquire, and keep up by 
transmission through successive generations, some knowl- 
edge of the Actual, which lios within the Seeming. As 



4 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

nations advance in civilization and culture, this knowledge 
grows, and they grow wiser. Experience accumulates. 
The observation of a few discovers truth for many. And 
thus, in various directions, much is learnt so well and so 
universally, that they who learnt it forget that there was a 
time when they knew it not. It is difficult to convince an 
ignorant man that he did not know the relative distances of 
objects as soon as he could see; that his own child does 
not know it as soon as its eyes are opened. And there is 
a great deal of the diversified knowledge which all civilized 
men possess, which was gradually acquired by earlier gen- 
erations and gradually learnt by themselves in early life, 
but which is so certainly possessed that it seems to belong 
to the constitution of the mind ; to have never been learned, 
but to be seen at once, by all persons of common sense, 
intuitively and necessarily. 

This work of correction goes on constantly, but not 
rapidly nor universally. And when nicer, more extended, 
and more patient observation has supplied materials for 
more profound and far-reaching thought, and wiser and 
classified results, then what we call Science is born. Be- 
tween the ordinary knowledge of mankind, and what we 
mean by Science, there is no sharp dividing-line, — no exact 
distinction. Science is a later and a riper fruit, and usually 
springs from the exercise of greater powers of mind ; and 
is, in a greater or a less degree, organized and systematic 
truth. But when scientific truths are discovered, they 
gradually become a common possession, and after a while 
they take their place among the facts of universal cogni- 
zance ; and at length, perhaps, among those which are 
thought to be the spontaneous and immediate perceptions 
of the intellect. 

The universal observation of all ages has ascertained 
that the sun rises from one edge of a wide-spread plain, 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 5 

and sets at its opposite border. We see and we know that 
it leaves its eastern bed every morning, and, climbing the 
sky, passes through the refulgence of noon to evening, and 
then sinks away into its western concealment. Thousands 
of years ago, the knowledge that this was not just as it 
seemed existed, and perhaps this knowledge was never 
wholly lost ; but not until some three centuries since was 
the actual fact so asserted and so proved as to take a fixed 
and permanent place in science. The thoughtful man who 
gave to his age the great truth that the daily and yearly 
motions of the sun are but an appearance, — that it remains 
the steadfast centre of a great system, while the round earth 
is ever in motion, and, by its constant revolution, gives to 
the sun this seeming, — this man was arrested and im- 
prisoned by the dominant power of the Christian Church, 
and compelled to renounce, upon his knees, this heresy. But 
it is no longer a heresy : it is a proved and certain truth ; 
much modified since Galileo's day, but made certain. 
Multitudes know it as well as they know the appearance. 
Greater multitudes do not yet know it ; but the truth is 
gradually diffusing itself, and after a while it will take its 
place in the mass of universal knowledge. 

So, too, in the unresting fluctuation of human life and 
the transientness of all we love and enjoy, some seek re- 
lief against this painful sense of universal and perpetual 
decay and change, by looking to the " everlasting hills." 
"We see them stand there, catching the first tints that bring 
the promise of day, or glowing in the sunshine ; and as the 
evening shadow climbs up their sides, we feel that through 
day and night, and all the days and all the nights, they 
have stood and will stand, unchanging in a world of change. 
And so we call them the everlasting hills, and drink in the 
lesson and the feeling of patient endurance. And now 
Science has touched them, and they melt away. The 
1* 



6 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

clouds — the fleeting and changeful clouds, their very oppo- 
sites, giving to the eye a new form, a new tint, a new place, 
with every new moment — are not more changeful than the 
hills. The waves of ocean rise and sink rapidly ; the 
waves of the solid globe, more slowly. It is but a question 
of time. The moments of cloud-changes or of wave-changes 
must be largely accumulated to make the periods of hill- 
changes. But so accumulated we know they have been. 
We know that what we call the steadfast earth has risen 
and fallen, swelled and subsided, just as much as the ocean 
that the wind wrinkles into wave and valley, while it obeys 
through storm and calm the beating of its tidal pulse. But 
this fact is a recent discovery ; as certain as any fact of 
science ; although it is known to a much smaller number 
than the movement of the planets round the sun, and is 
much farther from the point where it will be merged in the 
mass of universal knowledge. 

Again : Science has recently put forth an hypothesis, on 
grounds which sustain it in the judgment of some thinkers 
of great power, that all the material of the universe, all 
matter, is resolvable in the last analysis, not into definite 
atoms, occupying space, but into points of dynamic force. 
And the possibility is dawning upon philosophy, that the 
idealism which Berkeley, and some greater than he long 
ages before he lived, strove to establish, has a foundation 
in fact, though not that which they supposed; some truth, 
but not that which they saw ; and that further thought and 
further discovery will give better reasons than have yet 
been known for believing that all outward and apparent 
nature is only phenomenal, in so far that it exhibits and 
consists of force only, and not substance. This is now only 
conjecture, not yet discovery ; although so great a man as 
Faraday supposes himself able to demonstrate it. But 
certainly we might venture to say that it is probable, pro- 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 7 

vided we are at liberty to judge by the weight of testimony, 
and permit them only to be witnesses who have confronted 
the question, and examined it with all the existing aids of 
science. 

These instances are given to illustrate what seems to be 
one of the laws of human progress; and more might be 
given, almost indefinitely ; for we should find them wher- 
ever there has been progress. Beginning with no knowl- 
edge that there is any difference between the Seeming and 
the Actual, we acquire a knowledge of this difference at a 
very early stage of our being. It is the first knowledge 
that we acquire, and the foundation of all the rest. Per- 
haps, too, the whole progress of each individual through 
life, of the race through all time, of all men through all 
eternity, is but the perpetual and progressive growth of this 
knowledge through all the successive steps of the advance 
of humanity, and thus an approach towards absolute truth, 
— an approach which will be eternal, because this truth is 
always infinitely far from finite comprehension. 

Such a law, even if it have not the extent and univer- 
sality supposed, may still be worth investigation. And 
when we look upon it, one of the first things which occurs 
to us is the fact, that at every stage of our progress, stand 
where we may, we are prone to believe that we have at 
last reached the solid ground of reality. From all that lies 
behind us the veil has been lifted : we see that we or our 
fathers were ignorant or mistaken ; that we have gone 
beyond the positions then occupied ; and we readily charac- 
terize the whole that was, not as truth, but as a way that 
led to the truth ; that is, to the point which we have now 
reached. Undoubtedly Science looks forward ; for it has 
its aspirations, its hopes, its promises, and its doubts ; but 
even Science, which ought to know that its whole founda- 
tion consists of the ill-cemented fragments of past beliefs, — 



8 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

even Science often assumes that it is now building a 
foundation which will never need to be shaken to pieces ; 
and is proud of the hope that the future will only raise an 
ever-growing structure upon this firm basis. If'we speak 
not of science, nor of philosophy, and not of minds which 
they have opened and illuminated, we find everywhere and 
always the most profound conviction, that precisely what is 
now believed to be, is. Sir William Temple says : " When 
a man has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes 
there is no more to be seen ; when he is at the end of his 
line, he is at the bottom of the ocean ; when he has shot 
his best, he is sure none ever did or ever can shoot better 
or beyond it ; his own reason he holds to be the certain 
measure of truth ; and his own knowledge, of what is pos- 
sible in nature." He uses this language reproachfully ; 
and undoubtedly this quality or propensity of the human 
mind may be carried to excess, and often is so ; and then 
it hinders progress, and fetters thought itself with bands of 
iron, and brings upon mind that stagnation which is akin to 
death. So it does great mischief; but this is no more than 
can be said of every other quality or tendency of our com- 
mon nature. Which of them all is not liable to excess and 
abuse, and may not then become the instrument and means 
of vast mischief ? In itself, and in its rightful exercise and 
influence, this same disposition to plant the foot very firmly 
on the ground we at that moment occupy, is not bad, but 
good. Without this, we should live as in a dream; the 
present would be only an unstable point between infinite 
uncertainties ; the past we know to have been full of error, 
and if we hope that the future may be full of progress, still, 
if we looked upon the present as only one more mistake, 
which will soon join the long procession of discovered falla- 
cies, we could not have each day the energy and interest 
demanded by that day's duty. Every man, stand where 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 9 

he will, is in the centre of the sky. Over him and around 
him the bending dome extends in all directions, as equally 
as if it were made for him, and from him as its central point. 
No knowledge prevents this appearance ; nor should it ; for 
in one sense it is even physically true. And let him stand 
where he may, the earth and the sky are his, and made for 
him ; and as completely his for all use that is truly good, 
as if they were his alone. So, in' whatever point of time a 
man stands, he is in the centre of the two eternities. All 
that the past has done was for this moment ; and from it, 
as from a new beginning, the future sets forth. And it is 
right for a man to feel as if the present, and the work he 
has to do, were all the world to him ; so far, at least, as this 
is needed to give him interest and energy. It is well that 
we always feel that we stand now upon firm ground. And 
there is a view of this subject which may show us that we 
are always — or may be always — resting upon a reality. 



Appearances are of two kinds ; for they come from two 
sources. There are man's appearances and there are God's 
appearances. Man sometimes invests truth with falsehood ; 
or what he thinks to be reality with what he knows to be 
falsity. He wishes to disguise a fact, a feeling, or a 
thought, and has no means of doing so but by superinducing 
a veil of falsity ; and if we would reach the truth, we can 
do so only by rending this veil away. We begin by de- 
tecting the falsity and calling it by its true name ; and we 
pass, not through it, but from it, to the truth ; from it, and 
to its opposite. Not so is it with the chain of appearances 
through which our course lies, as we advance towards that 
which is absolute truth. For these appearances are God's 



10 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

work, and not man's. They are forms of truth ; they are 
truth, but truth accommodated to human perception, to 
human exigency, to human progress. They are envelopes, 
successive envelopes, which surround truth, and are them- 
selves formed of modified truth. When, therefore, we rest 
upon the clear perception of any one of them, be it the 
outermost and the first which meets the perceptive powers, 
or one which lies far within and has been reached only by 
long and laborious efforts and after many successive steps, 
we may well stand upon it as upon the solid reality of 
actual truth. 

Science has made it certain that the sun is always in the 
centre of the system, or rather, that the centre of the sys- 
tem is always in the sun, and that its apparent motion is 
due to the actual motion of the earth. But it is still as 
true as it ever was, that the sun rises and sets every day ; 
and that his rising and his setting make the day that 
summons to labor, and the night that permits repose. The 
discoveries of Geology only strengthen the idea of the vast 
permanence of the mountains. There they still stand, 
planted by Power itself, and still give the idea of power 
and permanence. • There they are, anchored in the rushing 
stream of time ; and when the mind is tossed upon its 
waves, and borne by the swift current until the sense of 
continual change and universal fluctuation threatens to drag 
it into this unresting whirl, — then we may still " flee to 
the mountains." We may look at them as they stand in 
their steadfast magnificence, and ask them to give us the 
thought and feeling that there are some great, enduring 
certainties ; some of the products of the Almighty Will, 
upon which the tempest and the wave beat in vain. And 
the answer they give, and always have given, and always 
will give, makes no discord with the utterance of science ; 
for that tells only that eternity does not belong to things 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 11 

outside of the soul. And if the progress of science should 
hereafter count among the conjectures which it had con- 
verted into certainties, the hypothesis that the ultimate 
atoms of external nature are only forces, and that matter 
is therefore, in the last analysis, only ultimated power, it 
would never be the less true, that we have a solid world 
to stand upon, and a home wherein we may do the work 
appointed to us. For this certainty would not be shaken, 
although science should satisfy us that our first concep- 
tions of the nature of the material world were gross and 
inadequate. 

As knowledge grows, we know better the extent of our 
ignorance. Beyond the boundaries of what is known, 
there lies the unknown ; as these enlarge, so does that ; 
and the more we know, the more we see afar off that we 
do not know ; and the deeper seems the mystery that 
covers with its clouds the distant unknown. The acqui- 
sition and enlargement of knowledge have often been 
compared to the ascent of a hill ; and the comparison may 
be carried quite far. As one climbs upward, his horizon 
enlarges. That which before terminated his view, and was 
seen obscurely, now lies more beneath him, and in full 
sight. Beyond it spreads a broader field, wholly unseen 
before. And as he ascends, and his horizon widens and 
retreats, he not only sees much more of that which he sees 
dimly because it is at the farthest limit of his vision, but 
he sees this still more obscurely than he saw before the 
things which bounded his view and formed a nearer and 
narrower horizon. It may be so with all increase of 
knowledge. The perpetual law of its growth may be the 
continual coming within distincter perception of that which 
was conjectured rather than known ; while all knowledge 
continually suggests a world of objects without its domain, 
of which there are yet only very dim intimations and 



12 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

suppositions, or even not so much as these. Therefore 
progress may be eternal. We are apt to imagine the 
highest wisdom as not only bringing the greatest amount 
within the grasp of certainty, but as leaving the least un- 
certain. The contrary of this last proposition may be true. 
The highest created intelligence, that has been growing in 
wisdom for a time nearest to eternity, may be able to solve 
all the questions which perplex inferior intellects ; but may 
also see, along the outermost limits of his own knowledge, a 
vaster mystery than can be suspected to exist by those 
who have not ascended so high. The nearer he draws to 
the Infinite, the better he can measure his distance from 
that goal which he may ever approach but never reach ; 
and the more profound will be his -sense of the unfathom- 
able depth and measureless extent of truths which lie so 
far from him, that in an earlier stage of knowledge he could 
have had no intimation even of their existence. As he 
grows wiser, he better comprehends eternity, and acquires 
a more perfect belief in the infinite treasures which eternity 
cannot exhaust. 

It may indeed be said that the increase of knowledge 
^never answers a question of moment without suggesting 
more and deeper questions than it solves. This may be 
the law of ages as well as of individuals ; and it may be 
one evidence of the advanced position occupied at this day 
by the human mind in the more cultivated portions of our 
race, that strange questions and startling facts are now 
presented for consideration, which are deeper in their im- 
port and more difficult of solution than those which men 
have been in the habit of contemplating. And it may not 
be evidence that an individual partakes of this advance of 
intellect, that he ignores these questions because he cannot 
answer them, or denies or despises these facts because they 
lie beyond the limits of his customary thought, and refuse 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 13 

to be classed and named and put upon the shelves which 
have sufficed hitherto to hold all his collections. 

We have already said that the Seeming which man puts 
over the Actual is hypocritical and false ; while the Seeming 
with which God clothes the Actual is itself actual ; is truth, 
but accommodated truth. This being so wherever that 
which exists presents itself necessarily to human percep- 
tions under an aspect which does not disclose all that lies 
within, it may be worth inquiry, how much of all existence 
comes under this law. It may be a question whether there 
is any part which does not, — whether this be not the uni- 
versal law of being. Possibly we may come to ask, whether 
the work of creation be not itself a work of superinducing 
externals over internals, — of making ever-existing entities 
progressively apparent and perceptible, — and nothing else. 

What is creation ? Is it the calling of something into 
being out of nothingness by an Almighty fiat ? This is the 
first and simplest idea of creation ; it is implied in the very 
word to most minds. This, then, we will assume to be in 
some sort true. And it must always be and remain true, 
that whatever is created is then summoned to exist and 
come forth in a manner and form which never existed 
before. But this truth is perfectly consistent with the 
principle, that no thing was ever created out of nothingness. 
And these two propositions are harmonized into one truth, 
if we hold that God creates all things from himself; and 
gives to each thing its own individuality, nature, form, and 
function. 

But how does God create all things from himself? If any 
one were to say, in the present state of human knowledge, 
that he understood this fully, and could show it clearly, the 
utterance of so great a folly would almost require that a 
sane intellect should listen to him no longer. But it may 
not be so foolish to say, that we may see this even now as 
2 



14 THE SEEMING- AND THE ACTUAL. 

a very dim and distant truth, and that there are many 
probable facts, and some certainties, which lead toward this 
conclusion. 

One of these is the universal gradation of being. And 
this fact is now admitted, and forms the basis of classifi- 
cation in nearly all the kingdoms of visible nature. The 
gradations are sometimes obscure; their special arrange- 
ment, or the scientific inferences to be drawn from them, 
may be uncertain. It may, for instance, be difficult to 
decide between some animals, which are the higher, or 
what standard shall determine precedence. But that there 
is a chain of being, of which the links all touch, and which 
ascend from the almost inorganic monad up to man, seems 
to be an almost inevitable conclusion from facts already 
known. So, too, of dead matter ; there is a gradation from 
the densest solid to the ether that betrays itself only by 
retarding a nebulous comet as thin almost as itself; and 
from this ether we pass to the imponderable fluids, and find 
gradation in them also. And we find it also in the vegeta- 
ble world, which, standing between the two kingdoms of 
dead matter and living animals, draws its own life from 
the one and then sustains the life of the other. 

If now we pass in thought to the spiritual world, we 
shall find little reason to suppose that all who die are, by 
that great emancipation, made equal and alike. Probably all 
who believe in a life after death, believe also that we shall 
find our spiritual home, as we find our natural home, a 
"house of many mansions." And without pausing now 
upon the laws which may be supposed to prevail there, it 
is enough to say, what none will deny, that men there, as 
men here, must differ, "as one star differs from another 
star in glory." 

And not this universal gradation only, but one truth at 
least concerning it, we may assume. For however uncer- 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 15 

tain it may be where the descending series of beings ends, 
or however far we may be from knowing on which one of 
the infinite myriads of existences creative power leaves its 
last and lowest footstep, we may be sure that its higher 
extremity, its summit, its beginning, must be God. 

"We may suppose that the first existence proceeding from 
God may be that which we should describe, so far as we 
have words or ideas whereby to describe it, as an atmos- 
phere surrounding him. And if we assume that in him 
are infinite love and wisdom, we may conclude that these 
would lead him to give to this, his first work, qualities 
which would enable it to be the medium by which further 
creation might go on. It would be the putting forth of 
his power in a form which would then become the instru- 
ment of his power. We have used the word atmosphere, 
in part because modern science is tending strongly to find 
in atmospheres the means of all action. It is certain that 
light is produced by the undulations of one ; nearly so, that 
heat is caused by another ; probable, that electric action, 
in all its vast variety of influence, is connected with another ; 
and suggestions are thrown out from quarters whence even 
a hint comes with claims to attention, that gravitation may 
be subject to a similar explanation. This living emanation 
from the central Divine, call it what we will, may give 
birth to others, each successive one farther from the other, 
each adapted to be the parent of lower existences, and the 
instrument of lower functions. This process may go on 
until, somewhere, the interval which separates spirit from 
matter is bridged over, and then the first beginnings of the 
natural world exist, perhaps in the analogous forms of at- 
mospheres, which, by gradation from the inmost and finest 
and nearest to spirit, pass outwards and downwards until 
they become as gross and palpable to sense as air and 
water. These fluids contain, or may contain, in solution, 



16 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

all the elements of the material world, for all the metals as 
salts are soluble ; and from them this world may be formed, 
leaving these fluids to fill the space and discharge the great 
duties which belong to them, while the higher atmospheres 
remain the permanent supports of the world born of them, 
and their forces and activities penetrate all nature, and fill 
it with its proper life. If in this way we may suppose the 
worlds of spirit and of matter created, by a similar grada- 
tion we may believe that animated beings are formed. And 
we may be led, by a belief in the unity of the will and the 
wisdom which forms them all, to believe also that a strict 
connection, mutual adaptation, and interdependence must 
unite them all. Thus, in this world we have spirit and 
matter. For man's soul is spiritual, and so is whatever 
belongs to the soul ; but all the kingdoms and powers of 
nature combine to provide for his soul a fitting dwelling 
and adequate instruments. When the body of man decays, 
there is hardly a province of nature to which it does not 
restore something it had borrowed; and while it still serves 
the soul, all of the forces and energies of nature are active 
in preserving it in the condition in which it may most 
perfectly respond to the necessities of the soul and obey its 
behests. And when the soul, or when man as he is a 
spirit, drops this body and becomes only spiritual, can it be 
doubted that the world of spirit can supply for him now, a 
home, a body, organs and senses, and all instruments and 
means necessary for his activity and happiness, as perfectly 
adapted to all his wants and powers as this far lower 
world could do ? Undoubtedly there will be an analogy 
between these two creations. The spirit, the man, remains 
the same. However his faculties may grow in strength 
and scope, they cannot so far change their nature that all 
that is provided to meet their demands in the one world 
should be wholly different from that which answers these 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 17 

demands in the other. So great a change would destroy 
his individuality ; he could no longer be the same person. 
He is the same in some respects and different in others ; 
and all sound logic requires us to believe that so it will be 
with his body and with his world. 

We may not have presented our dim notions of the work 
of creation intelligibly, or, if we have, they may not be re- 
ceived. But if the principle that no thing is created out 
of nothing be admitted in any form, and its necessary in- 
ference, that God creates all things from himself, be also 
admitted, the question follows necessarily, Is creation God ? 
and if not, how is it to be distinguished from him ? 

If Pantheism means only that God is in all his works, it 
is most true ; it states a truth upon which all other truth 
must rest, and from which all true progress must begin. 
If Pantheism means that the existing universe in its com- 
plex constitutes God, and that there is no other God, then 
does it declare a falsehood which includes within itself the 
germs of all untruth, and from which nothing can grow but 
darkness, and delusion. Whatever exists by his will is 
infinitely distinct from himself. He formed it from that 
which proceeded from him, and gave to it individual exist- 
ence. He is in it by his love, which causes each existing 
thing, dead or living, to tend towards, and as it were desire, 
a use, a good effect, an harmonious co-operation with all 
other things. And his love in each thing becomes in each 
an energy, an active quality, a life, which may be put forth 
in doing the work appointed for it. He is in it with his 
wisdom ; and this, whether as received by the understand- 
ing of man, and in that become reason, or as in the stone 
or grain of sand or breath of air, where it is only adaptation 
to a purpose, guides each thing towards its appointed use. 
He is in each thing with his power, and this is received in 
each according to the form of each, and either with the free 
2* 



18 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

will and choice of the recipient, as in the rational man, or 
without this, as in the lower forms of being, — in all, even 
the lowest, this power, derived from him and his in its origin, 
is the power of each thing to do its work. But infinitely 
above and infinitely distinct from all of these, and from the 
universe as a whole, is God himself. Flowing forth from 
himself that all may be created, sending forth life and power 
into all that is created, distinct from all he also dwells in his 
own infinity. He fills all being with his presence, and is yet 
the common centre of all being, towards which all things 
turn. Dead matter turns to him with its voiceless effort to 
obey his will by all the myriad activities, only the smallest 
portion of which we recognize ; but all exist by ceaseless 
tendency to be useful as he bids them be. The animal 
creation, led by their instincts, follow in the same path. 
And man, made in his own image, turns to him with obe- 
dience, with worship, and with love. And this is true, so 
far as truth and its offspring, order, prevail throughout 
creation. It ceases to be true so far as man, (to whom 
alone freedom is given, and he alone of all the works of 
God may voluntarily obey, worship, and love his Creator 
and his Lord,) by the abuse of that freedom, turns himself 
away ; and then through him there falls a blight upon the 
world around him, that it may still be in adaptation to him ; 
that it may become a world for use and discipline, and not 
a world for use and enjoyment. 



Among the startling facts which Science has recently ac- 
quired, is one respecting the latent electricity of bodies. 
Faraday supposes it to be proved, and in the later text- 
books it is stated as an ascertained fact, that every drop of 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 19 

water contains within itself electricity enough to destroy 
many men. The discovery of latent heat, made some years 
ago, is somewhat akin to this. Now, we would ask two 
questions. One is, whether it is probable that we have 
now discovered all and measured all the latent forces within 
dead matter. Another is, whether it is most probable that 
this tremendous agent thus locked up within a drop of 
water is doing nothing there. We should answer both of 
these questions in the negative. We should say it was 
more probable that we had but entered upon this course of 
discovery ; but we have gone far enough to judge of its 
direction, to know whither it leads, to admit among rational 
suppositions, that which tells us that all the great forces of 
nature are in all nature. In every drop, in every crystal, 
in every speck that the microscope can only intimate, but 
not define, lie these great forces. The ethers are there, if 
in them he these forces. Describe, name, arrange them as 
we will, the powers themselves are there in their several 
degrees. They do not wait. until the little becomes by 
aggregation great ; they do not stand without until the 
mean can grow into a habitation worthy of them. Wher- 
ever nature is, there they are. Sometimes we call them 
latent, or we say they are in their state of repose. If we 
mean by this repose a peaceful activity, it is well ; but 
probably most persons mean by this that they are doing 
nothing ; stored up in readiness for opportunity ; waiting 
patiently for the time to come when they may act ! If we 
see the lightning leaping to the earth, if before our eyes it 
dashes a strong tree into fragments, we hear its voice and 
tremble, and then we say that electricity is active. Is it 
not, at the least, as active, when it holds the drop together, 
and preserves in its integrity this life-sustaining element ? 
Let it cease for an instant this silent and unnoticed action, 
— silent and unnoticed only because normal and unimpeded, 



20 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

and in the next instant, not only would mankind perish, 
not only would life cease from the earth, but the solid globe 
itself would be disintegrated and destroyed. 

Science has now some acquaintance with the principal 
forces of nature, some knowledge of the manner and effect 
of their operation, and of their relation to the condition 
and the changes of the substances of nature. It is not 
far from recognizing in all these substances the perpetual 
presence and action of these forces, and in ascribing to 
this presence and action the form and quality and function 
of each substance. We may not yet call this an ascer- 
tained fact ; but it is a highly probable inference from 
ascertained facts. It suggests to us the presence in all 
substances of creative forces and creative atmospheres, one 
within another, in such wise as to lead to the belief that 
there is gradation, not only among created things, but in 
each created thing. There is to everything an outside 
and an inside ; and when, leaving the outside, we penetrate 
within, we find within forces and substances, finer, purer, 
and higher, even to the inmost. We are obliged to use 
these words, because we have no other ; but it is obvious 
that such words, derived only from place, can express only 
by analogy the ideas we employ them to convey. But this 
secondary or analogous meaning is a very plain one. • No 
one doubts what is meant when it is said that the soul is 
within the body, or that another motive lay within that 
which some person avows to explain his conduct. For all 
such purposes we must use words derived from sense; 
language is full of them. " Right " meant at first only a 
straight line ; "rule " meant only an instrument used to make 
a straight line, or ascertain whether it was straight. These 
original meanings are retained; but the secondary and 
analogical meanings, the higher meanings, are now so well 
established, and in such common use, that most persons 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 21 

think them primary, and the lower and external meanings 
secondary. Such words do not come to express these 
higher ideas arbitrarily, or from the poverty of human 
language ; but because of the actual and universal analogy 
and correspondence between the things of sense and the 
things of thought ; between the world of matter and the 
world of spirit. The words accompany the thoughts, as, 
led by this analogy, they rise from the contemplation of 
things of the body to those of the spirit. 

To return to our subject. If we may assume as probable 
the existence of this gradation within the substances of 
nature, within all the things which constitute or belong to 
the visible creation, we may, led by the analogy and corre- 
spondence between the creation cognizable by sense and the 
creation which belongs to the spirit, suppose that in spiritual 
things there is the same gradation ; in all and each of them, 
that which is higher and purer lying within the outermost ; 
while the steps of this series lead towards the inmost, 
which is the highest and purest. From this we may at 
once infer and comprehend that law of human progress 
which we have described as requiring us to pass through 
Seeming after Seeming ever towards the Actual ; and 
also the remark, that these Seemings are themselves in 
some sort Actual. The inmost of everything is the first 
emanation from the Divine ; it is that sphere of existence 
which is nearest to himself. If the thing be an intellectual 
entity, a truth, then is its inmost divine truth ; and therefore 
it is unattainable and incomprehensible by us. But this 
divine truth clothes itself in successive envelopes, all formed 
of truth so modified, that at last it is brought within reach 
even of a humble and feeble human intellect. No genius 
or great power is needed to apprehend this truth in this 
lowest form in which it has been, by Divine mercy, brought 
down within the easy reach of all. But every truth is a 



22 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

ladder let down from heaven. It rests firmly on the earth ; 
and although its higher steps, even all but those that touch 
the earth, may be unknown and unsuspected, none the less 
are they there ; and the angels of heaven, the ministers 
of divine love and wisdom, are always descending and 
ascending upon them ; descending to bring us instruction 
and light, ascending to bear our minds and thoughts up- 
wards. Even so, and in exact parallelism, every substance 
in nature contains within it in regular gradation all forces 
even to its inmost, where is the force just emanating from 
the Divine, — the Divine love, — which by this gradation 
can come down and fill the outermost form of the substance 
with active utility. And thus is creation a present and a 
perpetual work. 

Whether we call it parallelism, or analogy, or corre- 
spondence, there is a law of the universe which makes one 
series of beings answer to another ; and this law often 
comes to the surface, in such wise that it cannot but be 
seen and acknowledged. Thus, no one in these days pro- 
poses an arrangement of the kingdoms of nature in which 
the series of existences begins with that of man, runs down 
to its lowest member, and then passing to the highest 
animal again runs down to the lowest, and then passing 
to the most perfect vegetable again runs down to the 
lowest, and then passing to the highest form of inor- 
ganic matter once more runs through the series, and ends 
at last in mud and slime. But all these distinct series, if 
laid by the side of or over each other, are seen to have a 
kind of correspondence. The highest of the one answers 
to the highest of another, the lowest of the one to the 
lowest of another, and thus their orderly arrangement is 
into parallel lines, one line higher than the next, and that 
higher than the next ; but with a parallelism of the whole, 
and of the several parts, which runs through all the series. 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 23 

This parallelism may be said to be seen very distinctly, 
and yet very imperfectly ; for while there can be no doubt 
of its existence in general, yet it cannot be followed out in 
any direction without encountering breaks and apparent 
inconsistencies. Very many more facts must be accurately 
known before these chasms can be filled; a much more 
perfect recognition of the principles of creation must enter 
into Science before it traces out this analogy with anything 
like completeness. But upon this path Science has cer- 
tainly entered. 

We may say there is a twofold gradation of being. By 
degrees of one kind, things of the same class gradually 
differ, like more or less, greater or smaller, from one ex- 
treme to the other; and these we may call continuous 
degrees. By degrees of the other kind, classes of being 
are separated, the one class or series being above or below 
another, and arranged in parallelism with that other ; these 
may be called discrete degrees. Things separated by con- 
tinuous degrees, do, as it were, run into each other ; those 
separated by discrete degrees, do not. By continuous 
degrees all things are arranged within their several classes 
or series ; by discrete degrees all classes or series are 
arranged, one below the other, from highest to lowest. 
Continuous degrees exist within these classes ; discrete 
degrees exist among them. From the parallelism between 
the series which are separated by discrete degrees results 
an analogy, or correspondence between class and class, or 
between series and series, and also between individual 
entities of one class or series, and other entities occupying 
an analogous position in another class or series. 

The greatest and most important of these analogies is 
that which connects the material and the spiritual worlds, 
for between these worlds there exists this parallelism. Of 
this analogy Science knows nothing, for the plain reason 



24 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

that it knows nothing of the spiritual world : it ignores 
this world utterly ; or it has done so ; and if it is beginning 
to recognize the existence of a spiritual world, this is but 
the first step in a direction which leads to the extension 
of this principle of analogy to this spiritual world. 

If we believe that God is One, and that the indefinite 
variety of creation reflects the infinite variety in himself, 
which is still in him conjoined in perfectly harmonious 
unity, we might expect to find this parallelism in his 
works. We might expect that, when, beginning from him- 
self, he creates a world of spirit and a world of matter, and 
fills these worlds with many series of beings, we should 
find a similarity and correspondence running through them, 
due to the unity of their Creator and of his ends and pur- 
poses, and due also to his wish that his universe should 
be harmonious and co-operative, and that all its parts 
should coexist in mutual adaptation to each other. 

The results of this analogy or correspondence are innu- 
merable. One of them will be this, and has already begun 
to be seen in relation to the natural sciences : it is that a 
truth discovered in relation to one member of any series, 
will give instruction and illumination at the analogous 
points through all the series. Something, though not much 
of this, exists already, and is recognized. Vastly more 
will come hereafter. Different men, directed by genius, 
taste, or circumstance, will apply themselves to different 
departments of research. Whatever fact any one discovers 
will no longer be his alone, no longer be communicated to 
his brethren merely in repayment of what they have seen 
and told, but will be given to them as a light which they 
may use. And then any truth discovered in its relation 
to any one of the great series of beings, will become at 
once, merely by application and adaptation, a truth in 
relation to others. 



THE SEEMIXG- AST) THE ACTUAL. 25 

The same thing is true of Science and Religion. Be- 
tween these also there is parallelism, analogy, and corre- 
spondence. Science treats of this world ; Religion of the 
other, and of this only in its relation to the other; and 
between these two worlds and the things of each there is 
correspondence. In the future which is now dawning 
upon mankind, this truth will be recognized, and become 
operative, and fruitful of vast good. Then, what will be 
the relation between Science and Religion, what the splen- 
dor of the day which will rise upon both. For then will 
Science labor with tenfold earnestness and tenfold success, 
because all its discoveries will give new confirmation, illus- 
tration, growth, and force to Religion ; and Religion, in 
addition to the inestimable blessings for which she and 
she alone has ever been, and must ever be, the medium 
between God and man, will, at every step of her own 
progress and development, give back to Science new means 
for orderly and true progress, for sound and healthy de- 
velopment. Then will the moon be as the sun, and the 
light of the sun will be increased a thousand fold. 



If we seek the final cause of creation, we shall find it in 
the love of God. For it is of the essential nature of love to 
desire to give to others of its own good ; to impart to others 
its own happiness. For this God creates the inanimate 
worlds, natural and spiritual; but they, because they are 
inanimate, cannot receive happiness from him. Therefore 
they are only instrumental towards the creation, nourish- 
ment, and support of animated beings who may receive 
this gift. To them it is given ; all the animals, even the 
lowest, whose life is almost death, receive being and life 
3 



26 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

from him that they may be happy ; and they are con- 
structed in such varied adaptation to inanimate nature, and 
this in such adaptation to them, that they live upon it 
and by means of it with various kinds and degrees of hap- 
piness. Here therefore the purpose of creation begins to 
be accomplished. Only begins, however ; for it is possible 
that created beings of another kind should receive infinitely 
greater and higher happiness ; and the utmost that is pos- 
sible in this way is that which the love of God desires and 
his wisdom accomplishes. 

This end of the Divine love is reached through the cre- 
ation of man. For man stands in the centre of the created 
universe. From the whole circumference converging radii 
meet in him. Spirit and matter meet in him. All the 
forces and energies of the material world compose and 
preserve his material body while he has need of it. All 
the forces and energies of the spiritual world enter into, 
compose, and preserve his spirit for ever. He stands in 
the centre of creation that he may command it all, and 
possess it all ; and not until this is done is his destiny ful- 
filled. Therefore he begins existence upon the lowest plane 
of being ; he begins to live only a creature of sense, and in 
utter ignorance. But from this he may go upward, and 
ascend through an eternity of progress. Therefore all cre- 
ation is so adjusted and arranged that it offers steps for his 
progress. We may call these steps, if we will, by a word 
we have already used, — degrees. However we call them, 
we mean that all forms of being are connected together by 
regular gradation. All are in man ; at first undeveloped 
and unknown ; each successively awaking as man by his 
ascent gives to each opportunity for exercise, and materials 
to work with, and an end to work for. And so man may 
go for ever upwards, towards that which will for ever 
remain infinitely above him; at each step of his ascent 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 27 

seeing more clearly the wisdom of his Father and receiving 
more of that wisdom into his understanding, while at every 
step a new glow of love warms his heart, and a new hap- 
piness fills it. And so are the great purposes of God 
accomplished. 

To speak of such things, or think of them, while we lie 
grovelling here, — even to utter such a possibility, — seems 
to affront our degraded and humiliated nature. The very 
uttermost that what we call our reason, or what some at least 
call reason, will admit, is, that a momentary indulgence in 
this wild fantasy may be pardoned to enthusiasm, but on 
condition that, before it becomes insanity, it will awake and 
strive for soberness. And yet reason, if it will but shake 
off the incrusted slime that binds it to the earth, and begin 
with the acknowledgment that man and the universe are 
the work of one God of infinite love and infinite wisdom 
and infinite power, must see and say that the truth of all 
this is demonstrable by the severest logic. We do not mean 
that our argument, our process, is logically certain ; very 
far are we from saying that. But we do say, that the 
general conclusion is absolutely and demonstrably certain, 
if only the premises we demand are given ; and that where 
one jot of this conclusion fails or is wanting, it cannot but 
come from a corresponding failure or want in the recog- 
nition of such a God. 

Man may begin at the lowest point, and thence ascend ; 
and his ascent will consist of two elements :* one, the acquir- 
ing a certain degree of knowledge and mastery over the 
plane on which he stands ; the other, the passing from this 
as a Seeming, as an envelope ; and so entering upon a new 
and higher plane, bearing with him all the light that he 
has won before. Nor will his course be always regular 
and uninterrupted, even if it be always upwards ; nor will 
it be always the same. At some periods of this progress, 



28 . THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

a new step will be an easy one, bringing with it no great, 
no startling accession ; and at others, the step will be like 
one from night to day. 

One of these steps from the Seeming towards the Actual 
is Death. Perhaps no remark of a religious character is 
made more frequently, than that death discloses the utter 
nothingness of the things of this world, and that even the 
contemplation of death takes from them all charm and 
value, and discloses their worthlessness. And it is well 
that such things should be said, if death has no better way 
to rebuke and resist the wrongful love of the world. But 
there is scarcely a glimmering of truth in this saying. The 
revelation made by death is of a very different kind. 
It discloses the inexpressible and inconceivable worth of 
this life. It teaches him who awakes in the other world 
with a teachable mind, that all he saw and felt and lived 
for here, was, in one sense, but a shadow ; but that it was 
a shadow of a vast reality ; and was in its own truth, in 
its discipline, in its exact adaptedness to his own spiritual 
needs, a reality itself. He learns that the world in which 
he then is, and is to live for ever, causes, fashions, and 
governs this lower world ; and makes it an image of itself, 
so clothed, modified, and prepared, that he who begins 
existence here, and uses this world aright, becomes thereby 
qualified and enabled to live as God wishes him to live in 
the world in which he is to abide. When in this world we 
educate the young for the purpose of qualifying them to do 
their work as men and women, we endeavor to train them 
by similar exercises, to accustom them to similar exertions, 
to form in them similar habits, and so prepare them for the 
occupations of mature life. We look with sadness and 
compassion on one of either sex who, when youth has 
passed, is thrown into the midst of duties and employments 
unlike anything ever seen or known or tried. And so our 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 29 

Father educates his children for the other world. He 
provides for them a school in which there are, if we may 
so speak, models and resemblances, which may call into 
exercise the qualities upon which we must depend when 
we leave this school. In the utter disorder into which 
the spiritual disorder of man has thrown this lower world 
and all that belongs to it, there is no rule that is not full 
of exceptions. But even now it happens not unfrequently, 
that one who is in heaven finds himself repeating his life 
on earth. But his life puts on a higher form ; he repeats 
his work, but his work has risen with him, and from natural 
it has become spiritual. He may have found enjoyment 
while here in humble uses for the bodily welfare and com- 
fort of his neighbors ; but the body encloses the soul, and is 
the perfect instrument of the soul and of all its senses and 
faculties, and is made to be this instrument by a corre- 
spondence with the soul ; therefore all duties and uses 
which in this world refer to the body, have analogous and 
corresponding uses in the other world which refer to the 
soul ; and when these lower duties are performed here 
from a religious sense of duty, they rise in the other 
world into their corresponding spiritual duties. The same 
thing is true of all possible occupations upon earth, which 
are in themselves useful. There are in heaven analogous 
employments, which are to these what the soul is to the 
body. No doubt there are many who are liberated by 
death from distasteful and painful employments, which they 
leave for ever, and enter upon a life of happiness of an 
entirely distinct character. But this can only be where 
these very employments have been permitted to discipline 
the character and suppress tendencies which could find no 
entrance into heaven. Happier they who, even from the 
beginning, pass upward through a series of uses, always 
suited to them, always ascending with them, putting on as 
3* 



30 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

they rise higher powers and wider expansion, but always 
the same in their essential nature that they were in their 
dutiful and useful, happy though humble, life on earth. 
" Blessed are they who die in the Lord, for ... . their 
works do follow with them." 

Another application of this universal law of the Seem- 
ing and the Actual, or of the progress through successive 
envelopes towards the Actual, which is everywhere the in- 
most, will help to explain the successive religious dispen- 
sations by which God has made himself known to man. 
Take, for example, the Jewish Church, the Christian Church, 
and the New Jerusalem. The word given to the Jews was 
exactly conformed and adapted to the Jewish character ; 
and as this was the lowest among men, so divine truth 
descended even to their plane, and clothed itself in such 
forms that even they could receive and acknowledge it. 
But because it was divine, it not only contained within 
itself the infinite wisdom of God, but sometimes brings out 
with a distinctness like that of an unclouded sun, the highest 
truth, and is thus able to lead any one of that or any age 
or nation, who is willing to be led, even to the presence of 
God. The Christian religion rejects nothing of all this ; 
it fulfils the law, but it gives to its words higher meaning, 
and with this a greater power. And now the New Jeru- 
salem clings to the words of the Jewish Scriptures and the 
Christian Gospels as to the elements of its life, but again 
gives to these words a far higher meaning and far greater 
power. 

There is no more important instance of the relation of 
the Seeming to the Actual, and no more instructive appli- 
cation of the principles which govern and illustrate this 
relation, than those which are offered to us by the Word of 
God. They who have any belief whatever that this is 
something more than the words of man, cannot doubt that 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 31 

it is in some sense divine ; and that in some way it con- 
tains and expresses divine truth. Surely we have no 
reason to doubt that the word of God is in some analogy 
with all his other works. They are all results of creative 
power working through gradation ; through successive 
forms and means in a connected series. They all, in their 
external, come into contact with the external senses of man, 
and supply the wants of his external nature. They all 
contain within themselves latent forces and energies, and 
by the ascending series of these, they all communicate with 
and exist from the inmost and the highest ; or with and 
from God himself. It is so with his Word ; but in a more 
specific way, and with far greater intensity. The Scrip- 
tures consist of truth ; — of truth clothed with words, and 
written or printed, and so made accessible to all men. All 
therefore of the Scriptures, except the words used, and the 
still more external and mechanical means employed to 
bring these words before men, is truth ; and it is divine 
truth. The agency of man is made use of to supply this 
external. By inspiration he is made to furnish the words ; 
and by the use of faculties given to him, he is enabled to 
write and print and publish these words, and translate them 
from one language to another. We have here an exact 
dividing line between what is done by God alone, and what 
is done by him through human agency. But the truth 
which is so brought down to man is not severed from God. 
When the sunlight enters into a room, we cannot shut it off 
from its source, and enclose and retain it for our own use ; 
by the very act it perishes. Truth is the light of the 
mind ; what light is to the body, truth is to the soul ; and 
of the light of the soul, God is the sun ; and this light also 
would perish if severed from its Source. And if we would 
know how this light, without leaving the heavens, descends 
to a plane so low that the lowest of mankind may see it 



32 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

and walk by it, we must look again at that part of the 
Word which is brought into existence through human 
agency. 

By inspiration into man, he is made to furnish the words, 
and not only the words, but the thoughts also which are 
necessary for the purpose. Divine truth as it exists in 
itself is inexpressible in human language ; but when it 
becomes human thoughts, these may be expressed in 
human words. But divine truth no more enters into 
human thoughts than into human words, until it has been 
previously fitted by accommodation and adaptation for this 
purpose. And this is effected by its descent through those 
who are above man and nearer to God. These are the 
angels. They also exist in degrees. Some are .higher 
than others, and nearer to God ; some are lower than 
others, and nearer to man. They who are highest and 
nearest to God, first receive the divine truth which flows 
from him, and is made by his mercy to fall into forms 
receivable by them. It enters into their minds and be- 
comes their thoughts and their wisdom ; and is thus so far 
lowered and accommodated that it is receptible by angels 
lower than the highest ; and a similar process goes on 
through these successive steps of being, until the divine 
truth has become the thoughts and the wisdom of those in 
the spiritual world who are lowest among the good and 
wise there, and nearest to men. In their minds it has 
become such that it may pass into the minds of men. This 
is done in two ways. One of these is not inspiration ; the 
other is. By the one way (which is not inspiration) it 
enters into our understanding, and is given up to our facul- 
ties, our individuality, and our freedom, and meets opposing 
and contrarious influences from below, and then we find it 
and use it as our own thoughts and our own intelligence ; 
and these are true or false, high or low, as we are, and as 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 33 

we make them to be. This is " the light which coming 
into the world enlighteneth every man " ; * but it is not 
inspiration. But when God wills, this truth, prepared and 
accommodated by this descent, but unmingled with false- 
hood, enters into the understanding of one whom he has 
chosen for an especial instrument and of whom he takes 
possession. All opposing influences are suppressed; his 
own free agency is suspended. He becomes entirely the 
unresisting instrument of God ; and this is true not of 
his hand only which writes the words, nor of his memory 
only which supplies the words, but of his understanding 
also which supplies the thoughts, or, rather, which clothes 
with its own forms the truths which through this long de- 
scent have reached him. And every word and every 
thought are precisely those which are required to become 
an external correspondent with the divine truths within. 
This is inspiration ; and it is thus that the Scriptures were 
written. And one effect of this, which makes the Bible 
unlike any production of man, is, that the truth it contains 
is unmingled with its opposite ; and another effect is, that 
the form given to it by the angels, the thoughts which it 
kindled in their minds, the senses in which they understood 
it, and truth itself as it exists in God, all are within it. 
Another effect is, that it is the word of God in the inmost 
of the highest heavens, and with all the angels of all the 
heavens, at the same time that it is his word for men on 
earth. It is divine truth flowing as a living stream, as 
the river of life, from Him who is life itself, down through 
all modes and degrees of spiritual existence, to that lowest 
plane on earth upon which the spirit of man lives while 
here. And yet another effect is, it is a means of conjoining 



* I believe, on good authority, Grotrus among others, that the ninth 
verse of the first chapter of John should be so translated. 



34: THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

earth with heaven, men with angels, all with God. Not 
merely because it is one stream from one source of which 
all partake. But because whenever a man, or a child, obeys 
it here, or even reads it in a reverent and teachable spirit, 
then is there joy in heaven. For then the life of heaven 
is, in some degree, more free, more full, more active in its 
flowing forth for good ; it is of the very essence of that life 
to love chiefly to do good, and it has received one more per- 
mission and one more opportunity to be as it would and to 
act as it would, when through its influence the word of God 
is used as it should be used. And while man makes him- 
self happier by receiving, in such humble and imperfect 
measure as he may, this influent truth from heaven, which 
bears with it somewhat of the blessedness with which it fills 
the heavens, he at the same time adds to that blessedness. 
He reacts upon the heavens; and the dwellers there re- 
joice, as men rejoice in the enlargement of their power and 
liberty to do that which they most love to do. And thus 
all the links of this golden chain vibrate in unison. 

Within this lowest form of the Word, or its external and 
literal sense, is divine truth, and all the senses in which this 
truth is apprehended by all the degrees of created intelli- 
gence. They rise one above the other, or rather, they lie 
one within the other ; but all are there. And, excepting 
always the inmost sense, which is God's alone, there is no 
inherent impossibility which must prevent man, while here, 
from comprehending them all. He is not now, as he will 
be when he takes his place in heaven, in a fixed position. 
Every angel is perpetually advancing and improving ; but 
always on that plane which has become his as the effect of 
his life on earth. There he grows in wisdom, in goodness, 
in usefulness, and in happiness. But as the tree falls, so it 
lies. There may be eternal progress in understanding any 
one of the spiritual senses of the Word, for all of them are 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 35 

infinites ; but there is no such progress in heaven as that 
of passing from a lower to a higher one ; from the highest 
plane or degree for which a capacity was opened on earth, 
to a still higher. While here, we determine where we will 
be and what we will be hereafter. This we determine by 
the degree in which our minds are opened here to the re- 
ception of divine truth in the understanding and the life. 
There are those who have treasures of truth offered to 
them here which they are not ready or not willing to 
receive ; and to them they are offered in vain. There are 
others who, by a good life, by resistance to evil in all its 
forms, by their love to God and to their neighbor, become 
receptive of far higher truth than any within their reach 
here ; they live and die in ignorance, it may be in heathen 
ignorance, even in the midst of Christians ; but their recep- 
tivity of the higher forms of truth continues in the other 
life, and places them where truth of that degree prevails. 

The earliest and the principal means by which the human 
understanding can acquire a knowledge of the spiritual 
sense of the Word is always that analogy and correspond- 
ence of which we have already spoken, which connects 
together the worlds of spirit and of matter. The literal 
sense of the Word speaks of the things of the outer and 
material world ; all of these things exist because something 
which has a correspondence with them exists in the world 
of thought and of affection ; and by learning the principles 
of this correspondence, we may pass from the lower of these 
worlds to the higher, from the literal sense to the spiritual. 
Progress in that sense, that is, from the lower spiritual to 
the higher spiritual and heavenly senses is progress from a 
Seeming towards an Actual; progress in wisdom; and 
wisdom is not merely intelligence, but intelligence which 
springs from the love of goodness, and is governed by it. 
And the growth of this wisdom opens the senses of Scrip- 



36 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

ture, one after another, as they are needed to give the 
brighter light which is demanded by the purer and the 
warmer love. It may, perhaps, be well to repeat in this 
place what has been elsewhere said, that there are three 
primary degrees of life in heaven, and Of divine truth, and 
of the senses of the Word. The lowest of these is the 
natural ; for there is an external nature in heaven as there 
is here, and there are angels whose life does not rise above 
it; but it is spiritual-natural; and the principle of this lowest 
heavenly life is obedience. Next above is the spiritual 
degree of which the governing principle is the love of the 
neighbor ; and above this, and the highest of all, is the true 
heavenly degree, of which the very life is love to the Lord. 
Each of these degrees is perfectly discrete, or distinct from 
the others ; each has its appropriate wisdom, or its own 
appropriate way of viewing all things, — all relations, all 
truths, all duties ; and each derives this wisdom from its 
own appropriate sense of the Word of God. And enough 
has been disclosed in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg 
to give us some knowledge and understanding of these 
three senses as they exist in many passages of Scripture. 
Each sense is but a Seeming, if we mean thereby truth 
accommodated and made apprehensible ; for absolute truth 
or divine truth is incomprehensible by created intellects as 
it exists in God. Each of. these senses is also a Reality ; 
but a reality open to explanation ; and the explanation of 
the literal sense sometimes seems to be a reversal of it. 

Thus, in the texts in which God is spoken of as angry, 
and as a God of vengeance, and the like, that is said which 
is a truth, but only a truth of appearance ; as entirely so as 
the revolving of the sun around the earth. God is love, 
and only love. We leave the literal sense but a very short 
distance before we know, that between him and everything 
which savors of hatred, or is not perfect love, there is an 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 37 

absolute antagonism. And then we know, that, as summer 
passes into winter, and day into night, by a change in the 
relation of the earth to the sun, and not by a change in the 
sun itself, so it is our relation to God, and nothing in him, 
which gives to him the appearance of anger, hatred, or 
vengeance. We are opposed to him ; we are angry with 
him ; and we transfer these feelings from ourselves to him. 
But like all the seeming truths which God causes, this is 
most useful, and not false. While men are in that state, it 
is best for them to believe that he is angry with them, for 
fear may do a useful work where there is no love to do its 
better work ; and thus even " the fear of the Lord is the 
beginning of wisdom." And moreover, it is strictly true, 
that, while men are in this state of mind, whether in this 
world or in the other, the action of Divine Providence 
towards or upon them, from the necessity of coercion and 
discipline, puts on all the aspect of anger and punishment. 
The devils believe and tremble. But God himself feels 
only love towards all in heaven, earth, or hell ; and this 
love is equal and impartial, because it is always perfect. 



The literal sense of Scripture, as a whole, is but a Seem- 
ing ; but it is God's Seeming, and therefore it is true ; and 
it is truth modified and adapted to the wants and capacities 
of them to whom it is given. But this modification and 
adaptation are not arbitrary. They are precisely such as 
to form this literal sense into the very best introduction to 
the interior senses that infinite wisdom could devise ; in 
other words, it is perfectly adapted to this purpose. A 
reverent, religious reception of the literal sense into the 
understanding, into the affections, and into the life, opens all 
4 



38 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

for something more. It is this which more than any other 
thing enables the understanding to comprehend the higher 
senses ; and it disposes the heart to welcome the higher in- 
struction which responds to its larger wants. There is 
such a thing as a merely intellectual reception of the 
higher senses of the Word. But this has no value in it- 
self, and no permanence ; never indeed any value whatever, 
excepting as it affords a means for purifying and elevating 
the affections, and improving the life. On the other hand, 
as we have already intimated, there may be a preparation 
for a reception of the higher senses, which is attended by 
no reception of them in this life. The cause of this may be, 
that the higher truth is not presented here to the mind that 
would receive it. It may be also, that it is presented, and re- 
jected, through the unfortunate influence of education, or of 
circumstances, which cover the truth with a veil and distort 
its features. But, in either case, and always, one thing is 
certain ; a sincere obedience to the literal sense, an honest 
and affectionate reception of it, a conformity of the life to its 
requirements as to the will of God, will open the under- 
standing for a reception of the higher senses, and they will 
be received, in this world or in the world to come. 

All this attempted explanation of the formation of the 
Word as the means of conjoining man with angels and with 
God, and of the ascent of man up its several steps, may 
suggest the objection, that we suppose God to be doing in- 
directly and circuitously that which might be done by the 
mere putting forth of his power ; by the fiat of almightiness. 
Certainly it seems to be open to this objection; and as 
certainly every other explanation of the ways of God with 
man is open to the same objection. If, however, we know 
anything, we know that God acts by means. We may know 
as well, if we choose to reflect, that he acts by means, be- 
cause his own perfect blessedness springs from the activity 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 6\) 

of infinite benevolence ; from an infinite doing of good ; and 
he uses all that he creates as the means and instruments of 
his benevolence. He is able to impart to all — to each in 
its own degree and after its own form — a measure of his 
own happiness. For all happiness is from him and is his. 
The question therefore in respect to any theory of the di- 
vine action is, not whether it represents him as acting cir- 
cuitously and indirectly, but whether it is one which brings 
together all these means and instruments in universal har- 
mony, and exhibits all as living from and governed by laws 
of divine order, and as co-operating in the effecting of those 
great ends of the divine love, of which the very laws of God 
are but expressions and instruments. 

There is such a thing as ascending or advancing in the 
knowledge of any truth. And as all truths radiate from 
one centre, they must approach each other as they approach 
that centre ; and truths which are apparently irreconcilable, 
draw near, and become consistent and harmonious, by a high- 
er understanding of them. If we take the first and sim- 
plest truths of religion, we may find that they seem not 
merely distinct, but discordant or even opposite ; but when 
we advance along the paths they point, we shall see them 
converge. As we go on, we find their conformity, their 
conjunction, and almost their identity. We find the higher 
truth that lies within them ; and we find it a recon- 
ciling truth, doing the work of peace. Perhaps the sim- 
plest of all religious truths is that which commands us to 
cease to do evil and learn to do well. Whoever begins to 
obey this command supposes that he does so of himself, 
and with his own strength and power. But he is told also 
that this power is not his own ; that it is his only by contin- 
ual derivation from God, whose strength in him resists evil. 
We have here two truths, either of which by itself is per- 
fectly intelligible. One, that a man ought always to avoid 



40 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

and resist evil, because he always has power to do so, and 
is a free agent therein, and must abide the responsibility 
of free agency. The other, that he has no power to 
resist evil, but that strength and disposition to do so are 
always given to him from God, if he only wishes to receive 
them ; and that this very wish, which is the condition of his 
receiving power, is not his own, but God's, and is given 
him from God. Take the one truth alone, and he is a free 
agent, and may be good, independently of God. Take the 
other truth alone, and he is but a machine ; an instrument 
used and impelled at the pleasure of another. But within 
and above these two is yet a third, which reconciles and 
conjoins them, and makes of them but one. This higher 
truth teaches, that God gives us individuality as the foun- 
dation of all further gifts, and then with every further gift 
gives liberty and freedom to use it as a free agent. To 
understand this truth perfectly we must stand at its source, 
we must have penetrated to the centre ; and therefore no 
created intelligence can understand it perfectly. The wis- 
est of the angels of God may always have something more 
that he may learn of the great mystery which harmonizes 
the personal freedom of man with the absolute power, the 
perpetual government of God, making them both perfect. 
But while the wisest may for ever grow in this wisdom, the 
humblest may always have their portion of it. Sincere 
and reverent acts of religious obedience open the heart, and 
through the heart the mind, to some perception that he who 
would thus strive to be less a sinner is led and strengthened 
by the mercy of God, and at the same time is acting with 
a freedom he never knew before. This perception is even 
then, dim as it may be, the light of his life ; and it brightens 
with every step of his progress as he draws nearer to the 
Source of light. Its radiance shines alike upon the mercy 
of God, and on his own freedom. Both become clearer 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 41 

each with the other, as with growing certainty he ascribes 
his very freedom to the mercy of God. We may at least 
imagine an angel, one of those who are near his throne, at 
every moment feeling and rejoicing in the utmost intensity 
of personal existence, and at the same time enjoying a 
perception of the government of God over him, of the in- 
fluence of God within him, of the love of God towards him, 
and of his own utter nothingness without all these, which 
fills his heart with a faith that extinguishes all doubt, with 
a love that casteth out all fear, and with a blessing that is 
the shadow of the very blessedness of God. 



There is yet another religious truth of which we would 
speak in this connection. We mean that which is ex- 
pressed by such texts of Scripture as the following, from 
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the twenty-second chap- 
ter of Luke. 

" He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief. Surely he hath borne our griefs 
and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our trans- 
gressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chas- 
tisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes 
are we healed. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity 
of us all. For the transgression of my people was he 
stricken. It pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put 
him to grief; he shall bear their iniquities." 

" And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and 
his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down 
to the ground." 

In all that is said of our Lord, and in all that he says of 
himself, we may find the means of illustrating a principle 
4* 



42 THE SEEMING- AND THE ACTUAL. 

in conformity to which much of the Word is written ; and 
which has provided its enemies with the means of cavil 
and objection, and has not unfrequently given pain to the 
good, whose enemies within them infested them with false- 
hood. We refer at once to the apparent conflict between 
different passages which refer to the same subject, and to 
the absence of express and definite statement as to most 
important doctrines. Where the Word speaks of moral 
precepts, of the rules of life, there is no conflict, no uncer- 
tainty, no want of the most absolute precision. He who 
goes to it to ask what sin he should avoid, what good he 
should do, need never go away unanswered. But in mat- 
ters of doctrine it is altogether otherwise. To explain this, 
we must understand that in the Word is all Truth ; and 
Truth which is given to all men. That is not given which 
is so given that it cannot be received. The Truth therefore 
is so given in the Word that all men may receive it. They 
who stand on so low a plane of thought, that the higher 
form of doctrine would be to them but a cloud and a 
stumbling-block, find that form of it which is adequate to 
them, and suits their state, their needs, and their capacity. 
And those who are in a higher and in the highest state of 
mind, find also the very words which flood their under- 
standings with sunlight. If man were required to combine 
these apparent opposites, or rather to express these two 
forms of Truth, he could do so only by saying that in one 
place which must be denied and renounced by him who 
ascends to what is said in another. Not so is it with God. 
He says in one place that which is Truth, but which is a 
Truth that may serve as the external, as the body, of tho 
higher Truth which is elsewhere expressed. He who 
reaches only the first, may stop there ; he has made some 
progress, if he makes no more ; but he who advances be- 
yond this, does not lose it, for he carries it with him. 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 43 

Thus, in reference to our Lord, there are texts which as- 
sert most positively his humanity ; which even declare that 
he is a man like unto ourselves. And then there are 
other and independent texts, which assert with equal dis- 
tinctness that he is absolutely one with the Father. And 
there are no texts which reconcile these logically ; that is, 
which give the doctrinal and scientific explanation of their 
relation. But of such texts as these last, there is no need. 
They who have received the first aright, and hold the hu- 
manity of our Lord aright, or rather not wrongly, do not 
perhaps go farther, either for assent or denial. Nor could 
they be led farther by any logical exposition of doctrine 
with any benefit to themselves. For this would be a 
very doubtful advantage while they are not able to see 
it, there where it is. And they who hold his divinity 
aright have lost nothing of his humanity, but have them 
both, and with them the reconciling truth which constitutes 
and discloses their conjunction and their unity. There are 
those who hold the humanity of our Lord in a sad and 
wrongful way. They are led to deny utterly all his di- 
vinity, by that state of mind and heart which cannot see 
that all that is truly good must have in it something that is 
divine. They are unhappy, and must be so. For never, 
while in that state of mind, can they know what is truly 
good, or receive any genuine good into their affections or 
their lives. So, too, there are those who hold to his divin- 
ity sadly and wrongfully. For they are led to separate it 
from his humanity by that state of mind which cannot see 
that in all that is truly good there must be something which 
is truly human; something which belongs to essential human- 
ity ; something which must belong to a glorified and per- 
fected humanity. They cannot see that the divine clothes 
itself with the human in us and in our race, in everything 
which is really good, and for the completion of all its work. 



44 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

They crucify our Lord anew ; and rend his robe from off 
him and tear it into pieces ; and the. inner garment which 
in its perfect unity is without seam, falls not to their lot. 
They have not one God ; but they strive to have three, 
and therefore they have none. They are unhappy, and 
must be so. For they are contented with their own good- 
ness, and ask not that the divine should vivify their human 
nature. They are satisfied with faith alone, without love, 
and without life ; and therefore they will never have more, 
and even that they have will be taken from them. But 
let me not be misunderstood. I do not say this of all who 
hold the doctrines which lead to this conclusion. I hope, 
and more than hope, for I am sure, that multitudes of them 
who profess these doctrines, and intellectually perhaj^s see 
nothing beyond them, yet love and live beyond them, and are 
preparing to exchange them for the truth in another stage 
of being. And to such persons we fear that we may give 
pain and offence, by seeming to say, that what they hold, 
and are sure that they hold, as the means of their progress 
and the foundation of their hope, is only falsity or nothing- 
ness. But we trust also, that some at least will understand 
us better. But to return. 

If we regard our Lord as only man, there is no difficulty 
in understanding the statements which we have cited from 
the Word as expressing metaphorically a solemn truth ; 
there is no difficulty in believing that he endured great 
suffering with a perfect patience, to set us an example of 
self-sacrifice and of unresisting obedience, and so inducing 
us to practise the same virtues. But when he also says 
of himself, that he is one with the Father, — " Before the 
world was, I am," — that he is Alpha and Omega, the begin- 
ning and the end, and that all power in heaven and earth is 
given unto -him ; and when one of his Apostles says, that 
in him dwells the fulness of the Godhead, bodily ; and 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 45 

when these and similar texts persuade us that he is God, — 
then we find it difficult to reconcile this belief with the 
facts asserted of him in the texts first quoted ; for how can 
God be bruised, and suffer,- and bear our iniquities ? Never- 
theless, both of these things are true. The belief in the 
texts which tell us how much he suffered for us is essen- 
tial to the faith of a Christian ; so essential, that we find no 
words with which we could endeavor to express how es- 
sential. "When this belief passes away, there is no belief, 
no faith, left. The simplest, most childlike and unques- 
tioning belief of these texts is infinitely better than any 
theory or any explanation which would reconcile the rea- 
son to them at the expense of the slightest portion of the 
reality of the fact. But when this belief is fixed in the 
mind, and too deeply rooted there to be shaken or dis- 
turbed, then the contemplation of the other fact, that it 
was God himself who thus took upon himself our miseries 
that he might "take them away from us, only adds to the 
fervent gratitude, the adoration, and the love, which such 
infinite goodness should excite within us. And then we 
may safely begin our approach towards a perception of the 
truth which harmonizes these two facts. The difficulty 
which separates them is the difficulty of supposing that 
God could become man, and that an unchangeable, an om- 
nipotent, and ineffably blessed Being could come down and 
walk our earth, and bear the buffets of his children, and 
suffer. But we may get a glimpse of the truth, that we 
are already men only because God created us of himself 
and is within us ; that humanity is not the image only but 
the child of divinity ; and that in taking our human form 
and nature, and filling it wholly with himself, there was 
not so wide a departure from that general law by which 
the human nature of each of us is created and filled with 
life, that we have a right to say or to think it is an act 



46 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

which is of necessity impossible. And when we remem- 
ber the love of God, and his desire to make us good and 
therefore happy, and remember also how very much of all 
that is human is neither good nor happy, but bad and very 
miserable, and therefore must disappoint the wishes of our 
Father, we may conclude that all this does not give pleas- 
ure to him, but must give that which is the opposite of 
pleasure, however we may call it. And then it becomes 
difficult to say that the divine nature must necessarily 
exclude everything which is not happiness. And possi- 
bly, if we know by experience what that parental love is, 
which, coming from him, and his first in its purity and its 
infinity, descending from this perfection fills the heart of a 
parent, we may almost begin to understand that the endur- 
ance of suffering for the good of the child may not be in- 
compatible with the divine blessedness. If, from this, we 
can still go forward, and find some explanatory truth that 
would teach us how our Father by this 'work of infinite 
mercy provided infinite means of good to his^children, we 
might begin to see that there is nothing of inconsistency 
between the fact that our Lord and Saviour was our 
Heavenly Father, and that other fact, that he took upon 
himself our nature, and was bruised for our sins. And 
this explanatory truth is given in these later days, to them 
who will receive it like manna dropping from Heaven; 
and it will rise before the rising intellect, and enlarge that 
it may still fill the swelling heart, so long as Eternity it- 
self expands before expanding Immortality. 



The Seeming and the Actual. Let us understand their 
relation ; let us recognize the universality of the law which 



THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 47 

connects them; and let us learn that upon this rests all 
progress, and the power of progress, and the universal and 
constant duty of progress ; and let us also learn from it 
that what is without, and what is lower, is the form, and 
the representative, and should be the gate of entrance to 
all that is within. Let us know also that our Father in 
heaven became Emanuel, or God with us, that we, from 
the low plane on which he stood with us, might rise with 
him. That he bows the heavens and comes down to us 
from the moment that we live, — yea, yet earlier, — to give 
us life. That he comes always in his Love and in his 
Wisdom, and presents himself in his Word, and in a Crea- 
tion in which he is, and in which he enwraps his presence 
with coverings which, are very many, and, for the weak 
eye that cannot bear the light, very dense. " With many 
parables spake he unto them, and without a parable spake 
he not unto them." This is a universal truth and a neces- 
sary truth. He cannot speak to men excepting in a para- 
ble, and speak intelligibly. The whole external universe 
is a parable, and it means a spiritual universe. And this 
again is a parable, and it means God. He himself said, 
" Thou canst not see my face and live." And everything 
between us and him, everything between our own souls 
and his essential divinity, is but a series of veils which hide 
his face from us so that we may not be blinded ; and at the 
same time a series of revelations bringing to us all the light 
we can bear or use. Let them become the very steps 
and means of our ascent, and with our ascent, they will, 
one after the other, become more translucent. Through 
them, Faith, Reason, Science, and Religion will penetrate 
towards a centre which will always draw them forward, 
and always reward their progress. And at every step of 
that progress, Science will the more rejoice in its successful 
labor as the servant of Religion, and Religion will be more 



48 THE SEEMING AND THE ACTUAL. 

clearly recognized as the guide and animating spirit of all 
true science, and as advancing in strict companionship 
with all advancing truth ; and as itself the highest sci- 
ence. 

The Seeming and the Actual. By understanding the 
distinction and the relation between these two, we may 
acquire an immovable foundation for belief, and most of 
all for religious belief. The thoughtful man cannot re- 
flect upon the worlds within and without him, and fail to see 
so much uncertainty, and to see also that the limits and 
scope of this uncertainty are so uncertain, that doubt be- 
gins as soon as thought begins. And doubt goes on, min- 
gled perhaps with fear, possibly exasperated by efforts in 
in a wrong direction, until whatever of belief does, not fall 
away, becomes too often mere opinion, or, at most, a hope. 
And this is because whatever is presented to the senses or 
to the intellect is found to be, on the first rigid analysis, 
Seeming. But then what light breaks upon the mind 
when it is also found, that this Seeming is God's work, is 
woven by him of truth, covering, but not wholly concealing, 
inner truth, which rises by an infinite series even to Him 
who is himself the Truth. Then belief becomes Faith ; 
and it is the rest, the undisturbed rest, of the mind. Then 
is Hope strong, cheerful, and fearless. There is no dread 
of fallacy, no fear of any advance in knowledge ; but courage 
to think, to inquire, to meet the questions which come from 
every quarter. The dangers and temptations from which 
we cannot be free while we live on earth, still call, as they 
ever call, for watchfulness and prayer. But through them 
all, Faith is steadfast, and Hope assured, and Peace, the 
angel Peace, even if it be disturbed, flies not away, but 
hovers near, and soon alights again. 



THE SENSES 



THE SENSES 



The song of triumph which Moses and the children of 
Israel sang unto the Lord on the Arabian shore of the 
Red Sea, spake their gladness and their gratitude for the 
deliverance which his hand had wrought. But its tones 
had scarcely died away, before they began to encounter the 
terrors and the plagues of the desert. One of these is re- 
corded in the twenty -first chapter of Numbers. At the 
time of its occurrence, the Israelites were no longer in bond- 
age to Pharaoh. Between them and the land of Egypt 
lay that sea, which, summoned by the Lord to testify his 
power and work his vengeance, had stood like a wall on 
the right hand and the left while the escaping slaves 
passed through, and then closed over the heads of their op- 
pressors. They were far from Egypt ; so far, at least, that 
they forgot their tasks, their stripes, their wretchedness, and 
longed for the flesh-pots which had given them strength to 
toil. The Promised Land lay before them ; but it seemed, 
and it was, still distant. Upon its frontiers were fierce and 
strong nations ; and the land of Edom, which the wanderers 
could not pass through, lay between. " And the soul of 
the people was much discouraged because of the way. And 
the people spake against God, and against Moses, Where- 
fore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wil- 



52 THE SENSES. 

derness ? for there is no bread, neither any water, and our 
soul loathes this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery ser- 
pents among the people, and they bit the people ; and much 
people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, 
and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against 
the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he 
take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for 
the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a 
fiery serpent and set it upon a pole ; and it shall come to 
pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon 
it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put 
•it upon a pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent had 
bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he 
lived." 

This is a part of the Word of God ; and who can look 
upon it with this belief, — even if it be weakened by 
whatever theory would seek to explain it away, or lowered 
down to the very earth by a sensuous apprehension of the 
divine nature and operation, — without feeling that these 
words must derive, from their infinite source, more of mean- 
ing than meets the eye, more of dignity, worth, and useful- 
ness, than the letter exhibits. This feeling, taking hue and 
shape from the peculiarities of every mind, cannot but be 
known to all who read the Scriptures with any sense of 
their divine origin; and it has expressed itself in the 
many endeavors to find out this inner meaning. But no 
one has brought from the deep this pearl of price, and made 
the treasure his own. Nor was this a work for any man to 
do, nor was it a work to be done, until it pleased Him who 
gave his Word to man to give to him also the key to its 
interior meaning. This key has now been given ; given by 
the disclosure, through Emanuel Swedenborg, of the anal- 
ogy between the Word and the Works of God. 

It is the constant labor of science, and ever has been and 



THE SENSES. 53 

ever must be, to discover what may be called the interior 
truth of the works of God. Every object in nature offers 
itself to the senses in a manner appreciable by all ; and has 
also within this appearance secrets that neither the eye nor 
the touch discloses at once. Man walks through the paths 
of life, his feet resting upon the earth, and his head lifted 
towards the sky, rejoicing in powers which subdue all ex- 
istences to his will. But within him is a wondrous mechan- 
ism, of infinite mystery ; and science has never rested from 
its endeavors to fathom this mystery. On a lower scale, 
and in more simplicity, yet still removed in its inmost secret 
far beyond finite comprehension, every animal and every 
plant, every straw that the wind plays with, the dust whose 
atoms the sporting breeze heaps into masses, and every 
mote which a casual sunbeam shines upon and reveals, 
has, within the appearance which the animals and men 
like animals perceive at a glance and are contented with, 
texture, principles, and qualities which task inexhaustibly 
the most careful investigation and the patient thought of 
the strongest intellects. These things are all the works of 
God ; and will a reasonable mind be surprised to hear, that 
it is just so with his Word ? 

It was said that the key to the interior meaning of the 
Scriptures is to be found in the analogy between the Works 
and the Word of God. The origin of both is the same. 
They are brought into being by the same love and wisdom, 
and for the same purpose. When Infinite Love creates the 
human race that it may employ itself in blessing them, it 
creates for them and gives to them the world in which they 
dwell. And it fills this world with exuberant and living 
beauty, and forms it into an infinitely varied instrument, 
which may meet and supply their real wants in all pos- 
sible states of their earthly existence. It also speaks for 
them and gives to them its Word ; and fills this also with 
5* 



54 THE SENSES. 

a beauty higher than the other, as the soul is more than the 
body, and forms this also into an instrument of infinitely 
greater and more various power, as it is adapted to purposes 
of infinitely higher worth. And these its two instruments 
it links together. Each illuminates the other. They are 
both vocal; and their tones mingle in a harmony which 
swells upon the opening ear and opening heart, as man 
rises towards that Divine Source in whose image they are 
made. At every step of this infinite ascent, they tell him 
with a louder and a clearer voice, that both are revelations 
from him, and revelations of him. 

They are linked together. They are connected by the 
law which makes them the interpreter and exponent of each 
other. And it is by virtue of this law, that all things of 
the one correspond to, represent, and indicate the things of 
the other. 

As it is with the investigation of the secret things of 
nature, so, in the study of the inner senses of the Word, there 
are some truths which lie upon the surface, and it is easy to 
discern and comprehend them ; while others are more deep- 
ly hidden, and are reached only by a longer labor. But 
the deepest to which we can attain, whether we examine 
the Works or the Word of God, tell us, as their universal 
lesson, that within them lie richer treasures, requiring and 
rewarding further efforts. Every truth, like every living 
seed, — and seeds are the representatives and correspond- 
ents of germinating truths, — has within it qualities which 
image forth the infinity and eternity of the Universal Father ; 
his infinity by its tendency to multiply itself indefinitely in 
its progeny, and his eternity by its power to reproduce it- 
self in its kindred by successive evolvements for ever. 

It is said that some of the inner truths of the Word lie 
near the surface, and are easily discerned and comprehended. 
Thus, that Egypt represents a state of darkness and bond- 



THE SENSES. 55 

age, while the Holy Land signifies a condition of light and 
freedom, has always been apparent ; and although often 
called an " Oriental metaphor," or by some equally un- 
meaning name, this resemblance and signification have been 
known in all ages of the Church, and constantly made use 
of in homilies and other religious writings. 

While this resemblance or analogy is regarded as only 
a metaphor, it is believed to be true only in general, or at 
most in a few of the most prominent particulars. Thus, if 
Egypt is regarded as a state of spiritual bondage, and the 
Holy Land as one of freedom and elevation, the toilsome 
journey of the children of Israel from the one land to the 
other is often held to represent in some obscure way the 
more toilsome journey from the one state of mind to the 
other. But they who go farthest in the perception of the 
analogies of Scripture do not pretend, nor attempt, to see 
this representation in all the details of this journey. Nor 
could it be seen there without the help of the science and 
laws of correspondence. 



All men are by nature that which they are not when 
thoroughly under the influence of religion. The first 
condition of the mind, in which all must begin, may be 
called the natural state ; the latter, into which religion seeks 
to lead all, may be called a spiritual state of mind. The 
natural state of every mind differs from that of every other 
mind, in the particulars which belong specifically to each 
person. This is equally true of the spiritual state of mind ; 
and also of the progress, the means, the rapidity, the ease 
or difficulty of the transition from the former state to the 
latter. Hence, as to all these three subjects, namely, the 



56 THE SENSES. 

natural state of mind, the spiritual state of mind, and the 
progress from the one state to the other, there are things 
proper and peculiar to each individual case ; and there are 
also things which are common to all cases and true of 
them all. Now these universal truths in respect to the 
natural condition of the human mind, the ways and means 
by which the natural man may become a spiritual man, and 
the condition of the man when he has become spiritual, 
are contained generally in the inner senses of those parts 
of the Word which speak of Egypt, of Zion, and of the 
way from Egypt to Zion. For Egypt represents the nat- 
ural state, while Zion represents the spiritual state, and the 
way from Egypt to Zion represents the way from the one 
state to the other. 

Thus it is said, that " the soul of the people was much 
discouraged because of the way." This represents a uni- 
versal truth. None ever passed by that strait and narrow 
way without feeling this discouragement. Nor is it difficult 
to see that this must be so, if we understand that the 
change from Egypt to Zion, or the change which is called 
in the New Testament regeneration, implies a change of 
the whole heart, and of all the dispositions and affections ; 
a change which must be gradual and slow, and is effected 
by Providence only when the man himself labors earnestly 
in the same work. When the truths of religion are first 
distinctly seen in their beauty and their holiness, we think 
we can never lose sight of them again. The night has 
passed, and it is forgotten while we are gladdened by the 
sweet influences of the morning. This quiet has not come 
upon us without some knowledge of our own state and wants, 
some struggle against the habits or passions or propensities 
which we had begun to call by their true name, some inter- 
nal conflict between the powers of good and evil. But the 
storm of that time has gone by ; the winds no longer rave 



THE SENSES. 57 

or moan around us, the waves are still, and the unruffled 
waters reflect the heavens and give us the happiness and 
the promise of Peace. 

If this peace were now permanent, we should never 
know what we were, nor what regeneration means, nor by 
whom or how it is effected. We are therefore permitted 
to fall back, not into all the illusions, errors, and sins from 
which we had escaped, but near enough to them to feel 
their influence. The dispositions and propensities of an 
earlier day awake, and they disturb us. We long for those 
old indulgences which were once habitual ; they gratified 
our senses, or our love of the world, or our love of self; and 
we remember them well. As yet we stand aloof from 
them ; but our faces are turned thither, and the very dis- 
tance clothes them in a beauty not their own. And what 
have we to compare with these pleasures which thus press 
themselves upon recollection, and stir up passions and de- 
sires that slumber has strengthened ? Nothing but the 
MANNA, the simple food which has sustained us thus far ; 
and we " loathe this light bread." What is tins Manna ? 

When the first enthusiasm of reform abates, and the way 
which leads from the fields of life in which we have found 
enjoyment seems to open before us like a far-reaching and 
lifeless desert, we are still enabled to go on for a season ; to 
persevere, to advance even into this desert, by the conscious- 
ness that we are doing right ; that we have left behind us 
habits or sins which held us in bondage ; that it is good for 
us to renounce error and evil, come of it what may. The 
love of truth and of goodness which first set us on this toil- 
some way, goes with us, and is gratified as we go on ; and 
this is the happiness which sustains us. This is the manna 
of the desert. It comes from the Lord, and because we are 
now looking to Him, we can see that it is his gift, — that 
it comes to us from the heavens. We know that there it is. 



58 THE SENSES. 

as it is called in the Word, " angels' food " ; and as the chil- 
dren of Israel called it "Manna," or " What is it?" — be- 
cause it was wholly new to them, for they had never seen 
its like before, — so to us it is a new thing, for we knew not 
its taste while we tarried in Egypt. But after a while this 
is not enough. It palls upon our taste ; we remember the 
flesh-pots of Egypt, and remember them with longing ; 
and we loathe the light bread which is as yet our only 
nourishment. 

Then, we speak against God and against Moses. We 
were led from Egypt by the Divine Truth. It found us 
there, and touched our chains, and they fell. Amid the 
darkness it shone upon our path to freedom. It pointed 
out the way by which we might escape for ever ; it pointed 
to the Holy Land, to the city of God upon the mountains 
of Zion. It went with us, directing our every step, always 
our leader and our guide. It was for us, the servant of 
God. It was and is to us what Moses was to the children 
of Israel ; and it is precisely that which Moses represented 
and denotes. And now we speak against God and against 
Moses. We complain against the very Truth which we 
have followed ; we complain that it has led us away from all 
that made our life pleasant and delightful, and has brought 
us forth to die in a wilderness. There is a promise, that 
whatsoever we give up for His name's sake, be it never so 
dear, we shall receive a thousand-fold more, even in this 
life, with persecution. But we feel the persecution, and we 
forget the promise, or believe its fulfilment to be impossi- 
ble. 

This is the moment of our extremest danger. It is then 
that fiery serpents bite us, and much people die. 

To understand what this means, we must ask of the sci- 
ence of correspondence, what is the relation which exists 
between man and the lower animals, and learn something 



THE SENSES. 59 

of the characteristic correspondence and representation of 
the different species. 

All things which exist include a mystery, and this is 
made apparent by the first earnest effort to investigate them. 
Hence every science gratifies its votaries by the discovery 
of new truths, and leads them forward by the promise of 
further revelations, and this it will continue to do for ever. 
No one of them can ever be completed. And when any 
seems to be so, it is only to him whose weakened eye re- 
fuses to look forward to the light ; for as he turns away 
from it, and measures the narrow domain which past in- 
quiry has won, the infinite then lies behind him, and he 
believes it is nothing. To him it is nothing ; and it has 
happened more than once in the history of man, that an 
age has also been thus contented with its inheritance, and 
believed itself to be complete in wisdom, only because it 
was satisfied with ignorance. Not so is it with our own 
age. And it is because this present period is marked by 
an unprecedented energy of investigation, that difficulties 
and uncertainties cluster in massy clouds about the termini 
which all the sciences have reached. Of all of them is 
this true ; and of no one more so than of that which is called 
Natural History. There has been and there continues to 
be much endeavor to discover the true relations of ani- 
mals to each other and to man. Theory after theory is 
propounded and assailed and defended. The progressive 
development of Lamarck, the analogies of Cuvier, the 
circular systems of McLeay and Swainson, all of them 
have their defenders ; and they should have, for all of them, 
not entirely excepting even that of Lamarck, have some 
truth. But none of them are established, because they are 
all fragmentary, isolated, and exclusive. The central truth, 
which will hereafter attract to itself and rearrange all the 
scattered and wandering rays of light, is that which places 



60 THE SENSES. 

man in the centre of existence, and makes the life of all 
lower beings dependent upon and determined by a constant 
reference to him. 

Man is not one among the animals ; for he includes in 
his own nature the essential elements and characteristics of 
all of them. While they, on the other hand, taken alto- 
gether, compose and represent a whole which is the image 
of humanity. As they are naturally divided into great 
classes, which are again divisible into orders, and genera, 
and species, and indefinitely into individuals no two of 
whom are or ever were or ever can be precisely alike, so 
it is with the characteristic qualities of the spirit of man, 
which these animals represent and live by representing. 
Let it not be supposed, however, that if we could form, or 
if there could exist, an animal in the human form, clothed 
with all the powers analogous to those of humanity scat- 
tered among the various tribes which fill the broad realms 
of nature with life and joy, — such an animal would be a 
man. Not so. It would be as far from this goal as ever ; 
as far as the worm we tread upon ; as far as the micro- 
scopic creature which the unassisted eye vainly strives to 
detect. The animal world, regarded as a whole, repre- 
sents humanity, but not the whole of humanity. It repre- 
sents only the externals of humanity. Within all that is 
so represented, far within, and far elevated above our con- 
sciousness, — light and life, from the central source of life, 
from God, impart to human nature what exists nowhere 
else. Descending from its original elevation, coming forth 
from this inmost sanctuary, it descends and reaches and fills 
the consciousness of man. It forms his Reason. It be- 
comes that faculty in him, which employs all his faculties 
as animals cannot employ theirs, and uses all that these 
faculties disclose or give as they cannot, and utters a prom- 
ise which they cannot hear, and gives a happiness they 



THE SENSES. 61 

cannot receive. It makes him immortal ; and it becomes 
and gives that faculty which may make of all his lower na- 
ture, a means of an immortality of happiness. 

From the first moment when men began to inquire into 
the difference between them and the animal world, it has 
been a constant difficulty to define this difference in respect 
to the intellectual powers. That there is a difference is a 
palpable fact; not to be denied or doubted; but when 
men endeavor to define this difference, they find the work 
not very easy. All are familiar with the epithet of " half- 
reasoning," applied to some creatures who seem almost to 
imitate man, as if in mockery of their sovereign ; and may 
have thought the phrase fully justified by known instances 
of design and sagacity. Nor is it merely that they imitate 
us closely ; for how much is there which they do with easy 
and spontaneous perfection, while we could accomplish it, 
if at all, only after careful training and many efforts ! Long 
would it be, before we could make a bird's-nest. The butter- 
fly, who never knew its parent, lays its eggs with unerring 
accuracy only upon the very tree whose foliage will give 
food to the offspring that the parent can never know. The 
honey-bee constructs his cell and joins the opposite cells 
together in a manner so admirably fitted to save space and 
give strength, that it has required the application of the 
highest mathematics to investigate and determine this per- 
fection. The bee has built his cell always just so; but 
only within a few years has the human mind advanced suffi- 
ciently in the appropriate science, to be able to perceive 
and measure and demonstrate this wonderful result. At 
the beginning of insect life, this busy little creature thus 
offered to the mind of man a profound problem ; and ages 
must pass away before that mind could lay hold upon the 
problem, and great and long-continued efforts must be made 
before it could be resolved, and doubtless it includes a 
6 



62 THE SENSES. 

mass of wisdom which will lie latent for ages to come. We 
say it was Instinct which taught the bee to work this won- 
der ; but what do we mean by Instinct ? The word has 
been long known ; and the question of its meaning has often 
been asked ; and many and earnest have been the endeav- 
ors of thoughtful men to answer it, — many and earnest, but 
never successful. The world knows no more now what 
Instinct means than when the question was first asked, and 
the wisest can answer the question no better than the most 
ignorant. And yet, if I mistake not, the doctrines of the 
New Church have at length met this question with an 
answer that is clear and certain. At this time I can only 
suggest this answer. 

Paradoxical as it may seem to those unacquainted with 
these doctrines, it is nevertheless true, that the cause why 
men could never resolve this question, and explain the 
nature of Animal Instinct, was a moral cause. 

Their difficulty arose from the constant habit of appro- 
priating to themselves what belongs to God, and thus per- 
mitting self-conceit to close their eyes. 

The New Church, among its first, most essential, and 
fundamental truths, asserts that God alone has in himself 
Life and Love and Wisdom ; and that w r herever these ex- 
ist, whatever be their measure, form, or manifestation, they 
are all from him and are his. It also asserts, that they 
are all infinites, composed of infinites, in him ; and as they 
flow forth into beings which are fitting vessels to receive 
them, they are exquisitely adapted to each one of them, so 
that every being receives and has the life that is exactly 
appropriate to his own form, and the love and the wisdom 
which are required for his needs and uses, while these in all 
their variety have but one source, or rather are but one 
Life, one Love, one Wisdom. If we accept these truths 
honestly, and take them with us to the investigation of in- 
stinct, we shall find little difficulty there. 



THE SENSES. 63 

When Koenig, an eminent mathematician, successfully 
applied his subtle analysis to the form of the bee's cell, 
whose was the wisdom which solved this difficult problem ? 
He thought it was his own, and the world thought so too ; 
and he honored himself, and the world honored him ac- 
cordingly. That the little insect should practically work 
out a problem which no man before him had comprehended, 
seemed to him a mystery indeed. For he did not know 
that the very same wisdom which through his mind had 
solved that problem, had previously entered into the bee, 
and, adapting itself to his formation and functions, through 
that form had built that cell. And just so it is with every 
instance of instinct. 

The same infinite wisdom descends into the dead earth, 
and fills and moves the materials which are there, acting 
upon and in and through each subject in exact accordance 
with its internal form and purpose and function ; and crys- 
tallization begins its wondrous work, and the diamond and 
the ruby assume their invariable structure and their radiant 
beauty ; and, in utter ignorance of its true origin and na- 
ture, men speculate about this power, and call it one of 
the forces of dead matter. It enters into the seed, and 
again, working through its internal form, bids the root de- 
scend and search out its nutriment, and the stem rise into air 
and clothe itself with leaves and ripen its fruit ; and again, 
with the same ignorance, we speculate about it, and this 
time we rank it among the living forces of organic matter. 
It enters into the animal, and here also exquisitely adapt- 
ing itself to his form, which it has already adapted to his 
uses, it teaches him from birth to find or construct and 
use all that he needs for shelter, food, and the propaga- 
tion of his kind, and all the happiness he can enjoy ; and 
again we speculate about it, and this time we call it In- 
stinct. It enters into man, into his understanding, which is 



64 THE SENSES. 

a far higher form than any which it found and filled in the 
lower realms of being ; and because this is in him, and 
made his, and works through him, he may, if he will, go 
forth and investigate all that it has done in the inferior 
world around him, and mark and measure its traces, even 
while he is most blind to its origin And now again we 
speculate about it ; it does not occur to us that there can 
be any relation whatever between its present and its for- 
mer manifestations ; and we give to it now the name of 
man's own Reason. 

What, then, is the distinctive difference between Reason 
and Instinct ? We ask this question in vain, if we look at 
them in their source, or in their own original and essen- 
tial nature ; for there they are one and the same. But we 
may ask the question with better success, if we look at the 
distinctive differences between the functions, uses, and des- 
tinies of animals and men. We shall see that the animal, 
born to perish, cannot profit by the discipline and exercise 
and gradual development of his faculties, and the discovery 
of his mistakes, and the voluntary change from wrong to 
right; and he has therefore none of these things. The 
Divine Wisdom, as it constitutes and fills his mind, so con- 
stitutes that mind, and through it his external and internal 
organization, and so fills and acts through this organization, 
that it makes him to do at once, and always, and with an 
accuracy which is never learnt and never forgotten, all 
that is necessary for the use he has to perform and the 
good he may enjoy. 

Not so is it with man. He lives in this world for the 
very purpose of discipline. He is not born to perish ; but 
for objects which are to be accomplished by the gradual i 
growth and the voluntary improvement of his mind and 
character, and the successive evolution of his faculties, and 
their slow ripening under his own culture. He is therefore 



THE SENSES. 65 

so constructed, spiritually and materially, that the Divine 
Wisdom, filling his understanding, adapting itself to the in- 
ternal form of that understanding, and ever so working 
through it and in conformity with it that man may work 
as of himself, comes forth and manifests itself as man's 
Reason. Not complete and limited at once as instinct is, 
but while feeble in its beginnings, uncertain in its action, 
slow in its advance and improvement, it has before it a 
boundless future, which it will never measure nor fill, only 
because it will always remain, in man, finite. 

I should not have ventured to throw out these slight in- 
timations of the solution which a new church offers of an 
old and a great problem, did I not suppose that this solution 
is itself so certain and so clear, that, if I have not failed to 
express these intimations intelligibly, they will suffice to lead 
the mind which examines into their bearing and effect, to 
an understanding of the true difference between the animal 
that perishes and the man that lives. Nor shall we lose, 
by this explanation, anything of the delight with which a 
thoughtful mind observes and investigates what are called 
the wonders of animal instinct. If we can strengthen and 
illustrate our recognition of the omnipresence of our Father, 
of the unity of his creation, of the mutual interdependence 
and correlation of all its parts, we shall lose nothing, and 
we shall gain much. 

If we see that the whole animal world consists of forms 
which are receptive of life from the same source that fills the 
mind of man, let us arrange these forms in reference to those 
passages of Scripture which have suggested these remarks. 

The general distinctions among animals are obvious and- 
indisputable, and have always been recognized. Thus, 
there are some whose home is in the air ; others live in the 
waters, and there only ; and of those which are confined to 
the solid land, some walk upon it, lifted from its surface by 



66 THE SENSES. 

appropriate limbs, while others creep or crawl upon the 
ground and touch it for ever. These last are the reptiles ; so 
called from a Latin word which signifies " to creep." Al- 
though this class includes, in systematic natural history, 
many animals which are not serpents, yet he, the Serpent, 
may be regarded as the type and the generic name of the 
whole. 

We must pass over the families of birds and insects, of 
fishes and beasts, as involving considerations not now appro- 
priate. But what is the correspondence of the serpent? 
In other words, what are the faculties and qualities of the 
human mind to which the organization of the serpent is 
analogous, and which, through that organization, manifest 
themselves as the instinct of the serpent ? 

Man lives in and upon and by means of an external 
world. There is his home ; from it he procures the food 
by which his body and his mind live, for it yields him all 
the food of his body and the beginnings and foundation of 
all the food of his mind. Because this is so, man is en- 
dowed with faculties, bodily and mental, to recognize and 
make use of this external world. He may cultivate its soil, 
and it will bring forth food to sustain life and delight his 
sense of taste. He may build upon it and of the materials 
which it offers, a house which will shelter him and his from 
sun and storm and night, and be his home; and it also 
provides him with the means of procuring raiment, at once 
for his comfort and his adornment. Its relation to the 
mind is equally important ; for as his senses open upon this 
world he may derive from its infinite variety of objects a 
§ boundless wealth and unfailing succession of thoughts and 
truths. Here is the necessary beginning of all knowledge ; 
it is here that our thoughts put on their bodies and are 
born ; here our words are made. 

While man is thus employed in gathering in the fruits of 



THE SENSES. ■ 67 

the external world, in acquiring or constructing from it the 
means of food, clothing, and shelter for his body, or in col- 
lecting and arranging the rudiments of thought and knowl- 
edge, he is using a variety of faculties, all of which, taken 
together, constitute his sensuous nature, and may be compre- 
hended under that name. This sensuous nature is always 
in close contact with the external world ; in and by this 
contact it lives. And it is precisely this whole sensuous 
nature which the great family of Reptilia, or the serpent 
tribe, corresponds to and denotes. 

Man has, as was before suggested, other powers ; and by 
them he may do other and very different things. He may 
walk erect upon that earth which forms the external of his 
mind, and lift his thoughts above it ; he may dive into the 
great ocean of natural truth, and explore its deepest re- 
cesses ; he may soar into the upper regions of a purer and 
more luminous intellectuality ; and in so doing he may 
use the various faculties represented by different classes of 
animals. But none of these things can his sensuous na- 
ture do ; none of these things could the man do if he had 
no other than a sensuous nature ; none of these things can 
he do by means of his sensuous nature ; and therefore the 
bodily faculties and habits analogous to these things are 
not those proper to that tribe of animals which corresponds 
to and represents that sensuous nature ; for upon them the 
doom is spoken, " Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust 
shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." 



It will be obvious, upon a very little reflection, that 
the serpent of our sensuous nature may bite us in two 
ways ; for we have understanding and will, and to both of 



68 THE SENSES. 

these this serpent has access ; or, in other words, our sen- 
suous nature appeals in one way to our understanding and 
in another way to our affections. 

The serpent of our minds, or that sensuous nature which 
the serpent represents, bites us in the first of these ways, 
and pours his deadly venom into the understanding, when 
he makes us believe that there is nothing else than that ex- 
ternal world which our sensuous nature perceives and uses. 
It is often very easy for him to do this. The external 
world we have, and we know that we have it. That which 
we can see and hear, touch and feel, certainly exists. We 
recognize it, we make it our own. We measure its dimen- 
sions, we investigate its qualities and effects. We bring 
science to bear upon it, and search into its hidden nature, 
and place it in orderly arrangement, or connect it with 
daily use. If our tastes lead in that direction, we may lux- 
uriate in the delightful contemplation of the great laws and 
truths which bind together all matter, in all its forms and all 
its activities. Far otherwise is it with spiritual existences. 
We ask, Who will come from the grave and assure us that 
a world of life lies beyond that broad, black veil ? — and we 
ask the question in the mistaken belief, that, if one would 
come and tell us this, we should believe him. Who has 
brought us a piece of spiritual substance, that we might hold 
it in the hand, and measure it by the rule, and weigh it in 
scales? Where is the accurate and intelligible science 
whose home is in the realms of mind and feeling, — the 
science that has climbed the ascending steps of demon- 
stration even to the height of spiritual being, and brought 
thence unquestionable gains ? What shall prove to us that 
the busy world around us, in which we are so busy, and in 
whose loveliness we find so much to love, is not all that is ? 
Often, very often, are men persuaded that the be-all and the 
end-all are indeed here ; and this is the serpent's work. It 



THE SENSES. by 

is then that the senses delude the understanding ; then, that 
the serpent bites. 

" Now the serpent is more subtle than any beast of the 
field " ; and his work is accomplished while we know it 
not. The venom is in our hearts, and the stealthy step of 
death is near, although we felt no sting, and perhaps should 
be somewhat angry with the physician who ventured to point 
out the wound. Are we infidels ? would be the reproachful 
answer. Were we not born and bred in a Christian land ? 
Do we not believe as our neighbors believe, and as we were 
taught to believe ? Such would be the response ; and yet 
some doubt might exist on the subject ; and as it is of some 
importance to every individual to know whether he too be 
sound or stricken, it is well that we have a test not difficult 
in its application, and very reliable in its information. 
This test we have, in the fact that an actual belief in spirit- 
ual existence, in a supersensuous world, in a life really and 
truly succeeding death, produces a class of thoughts and 
feelings, of interests, purposes, and pursuits, wholly differ- 
ent from those which accompany unbelief. There are 
some things common to both^of these states of mind. In 
either of them we may lead a lawful, orderly, and useful 
life. In either of them we may call ourselves by the name 
of Christian, and contribute our share to the support of the 
particular tenets we favor, and, resting from our labors on 
the day of rest, help to swell the multitudes who listen in 
all the churches of our land to words of prayer and praise. 
All these things we may be and do, from habit or educa- 
tion, or from a sense of propriety, or from a conviction that 
this is the easiest way to live in comfort, or from a deep 
sense of the advantages which in this community wait upon 
a decent respect for religion ; or because we really think 
we are religious, and are well content to pay this price for 
the pleasure and quiet of believing so. 



70 THE SENSES. 

All these things we may be and do, with very little gen- 
uine belief in the reality or the utility and worth of spir- 
itual things. But there are some other things which we 
cannot so do. We cannot carry with us through the week 
of labor, and keep before us amid all the anxieties of a busy 
thrift or of domestic care, the one great purpose of growth 
in goodness, as a perpetual light, which no darkness is per- 
mitted to obscure, no whirlwind of care extinguish, no inter- 
vening interest or pleasure hide. When death is near, or 
has stricken down one who is dear to us, we cannot see that 
this blow falls not on us, but on our fetters, and that the call 
which fills the world with mourning and with terror is but 
a summons unto life. We are placed in this world to pre- 
pare for another ; but if all religion so declares, how- much 
is there of human life which negatives this truth. If we 
would learn how large a proportion of our own life implies 
this denial, how much of it makes manifest the influence of 
the serpent, the way to this knowledge lies open before us. 
We have but to ask ourselves what part of our thoughts and 
cares, of the common and habitual interests, purposes, and 
pleasures which fill up everj^ day, would be just what they 
now are if the grave were to close them all ; and in what 
proportion of them the thought and purpose of preparation 
for a world beyond the grave are cognizable and influential. 

Hitherto I have spoken only of opinion and belief; but 
there is yet another way in which the serpent bites us ; for 
man is not merely a thinking being. His Father thinks, in- 
tends, designs ; and hence man, his child, has understanding 
and thought. But the thoughts and purposes of the Al- 
mighty do themselves spring from another element of his 
own divine nature : from his love. For he not only thinks, 
but he wills : he loves. Because it is of the nature and 
essence of love to give of itself to another, he creates man 
to become the recipient of both of these elements of his 



THE SENSES. 71 

divine nature. He creates man with a capacity of receiv- 
ing of his own divine wisdom ; and this capacity is man's 
understanding, into which the divine wisdom flows, and, 
being there modified and accommodated to -man's own na- 
ture, becomes man's own thoughts. He also creates man 
with a capacity of receiving his love ; and this capacity is 
man's will, into which the divine love flows, and, being there 
similarly modified and accommodated, becomes man's own 
love, or desires, or affections. ' Now the external or sensu- 
ous nature of man, Which the serpent tribe typifies, be- 
longs to both of these capacities ; and is the instrument, 
the servant, of both of them alike. It is their servant 
for good or their servant for evil. "We have seen how this 
sensuous nature becomes a serpent, stinging the mind, the 
thoughts, the understanding. Let us now see how he pours 
his " fiery " venom into the affections, the will, the heart. 

Here too, as before, we must begin with looking at the 
good which the sensuous nature may do, in relation to the 
will. For as all falsity is but a negation or a corruption 
of the' truth, so all evil is but a perversion or abuse of 
good. 

As the sensuous part of our nature supplies the under- 
standing, by means of sensations, with all the elements of 
thought, so it supplies the will, by means of sensations, with 
the earliest and simplest objects of desire or aversion. 
There, on these outermost borders of our being, where we 
learn to think, we learn also to feel, to enjoy, to suffer ; to 
seek after that which gives us pleasure, to shrink from that 
which inflicts pain. As, in the relation of the understand- 
ing to sensation, the mind should soon rise above mere 
sensation, and use the materials which sensation supplies 
as food and means of higher thought, so also is it in the re- 
lation of the will or the affections to sensation. For they 
also should soon rise above this lowest plane, and find other 



72 THE SENSES. 

things to love or hate ; other pleasures and other pains, 
above those of the senses. Still, through the periods of a 
never-ending life, the senses remain a basis for the will as 
for the understanding. They instruct us continually. It is 
one of the general laws or truths of our being, that pain is 
associated with the things we should not do, while pleasure 
is closely connected with the things we should do. The 
irrational habits and corrupted tastes of customary life weak- 
en the efficacy of this law, and sometimes indeed reverse it ; 
but that is because evil has falsified the truth. The pleas- 
ures of the senses prompt us to those acts which are neces- 
sary for the preservation of life and strength and usefulness, 
while the pains of hunger, of exposure, and of sickness 
work in unison with those pleasures, by inducing acts 
or efforts to restore and preserve our health ; and there are 
yet other pains, as all of those that follow intemperance and 
excess of any kind, whose office it is to guard the narrow 
passage where wholesome pleasure passes over into lawless 
indulgence. 

Such is the proper influence and effect of the pains and 
pleasures of the senses. But it would not be well for man 
that they should always be ready with their unerring guid- 
ance, for then they would supersede that employment of 
the reason, that discipline of self-control, that wakefulness 
and energy of conscience, which are necessary for man's 
growth in goodness and in wisdom. Therefore they often 
fail. Often, their true and permanent result, in a pleasure 
which rewards good conduct or a pain which punishes de- 
merit, is remote, while a false and transient pain or pleasure, 
near at hand, seduces or terrifies us into misconduct. 

We have in this one of the many examples of that provi- 
dential mercy which causes evil to bring with it its remedy. 
When and so far as we are irrational, or subdued by sense 
or lust, what we need for thorough reformation is not the 



THE SENSES. 73 

compulsory instruction or restraint which would come ir- 
resistibly if all pleasure withered at the touch of sin, and 
pain guarded the way to sin as with a fiery sword. We 
need the means and opportunity of becoming rational by 
listening of our own choice to reason while it rebukes habit 
or passion, and of giving up the pleasures which entice and 
ensnare us, because we hear the voice of truth and of re- 
ligion bidding us renounce them. We are in the condition 
in which we need self-discipline ; only by it, only by over- 
coming our own evil love, and voluntarily abandoning the 
thing we desire, can we make the tempter flee, and establish 
in our minds those affections which belong to regenerate 
and purified humanity. Therefore, while we are in this 
state, the true functions of pleasure and of pain, of sponta- 
neous emotion and desire, are, in a greater or a less degree, 
suspended. We must now look, not to them, but from them ; 
and it is to reason, truth, and religion, in hostility to them, 
that we must give our allegiance. But when this work is 
done, then the proper functions of pain and pleasure revive 
in their full vigor. With our growth in goodness, there 
comes reformation of habit and purification of taste ; and 
then follows that state of which we can hardly form a dis- 
tinct conception upon earth, but which is the ruling state 
of heaven. Then pain and pleasure, directly and appar- 
ently, at once, and not as before remotely, declare them- 
selves the immediate exponents of truth and the guides to 
good. Then, life is no longer resistance and combat ; but 
a yielding to desires and emotions, and a ready and fearless 
acceptance of pleasures which are constantly offering them- 
selves to regenerated affections. For one definition of 
heaven might be, the state in which purified and gratified 
desire indulges and confirms goodness. 

In this world, now, and probably always, the influence of 
the senses, in their power of giving pain or pleasure, is two- 
7 



74 THE SENSES. 

fold. On the one hand this influence is instructive ; it is a 
friend, a guide, a safeguard. On the other, it is dangerous 
and delusive. That it may be a safe and valuable friend, 
our senses and our tastes must not be corrupted by foolish 
habits and sinful indulgences. More important is it that 
our reason should control our appetites, and that our senses, 
content with the work of service, claim no mastery. But 
most essential is it that the objects and ends of our life — 
those which direct and animate our conduct and determine 
our course, and point out the goal we are to reach — should 
be wisely chosen, always remembered, and constantly pre- 
ferred. This last condition is the greatest of all. If this fail, 
the senses then burn with venom and strike the hot poison 
into every vital part. If it fail, if our ends and objects are 
so unwisely chosen, that in the immediate or the near we 
forget the future and the permanent, then is our whole na- 
ture distorted and deformed, and our life becomes a living 
death. The pleasure which was given to us as a blessing 
is transformed into a curse. It was given that we might 
enjoy life while sustaining, preserving, and perpetuating life. 
It was bidden to wait upon healthy appetite, upon the senses 
in all their modes of orderly activity, upon gratified desire 
in all legitimate and wholesome forms. And men have 
made of it a nutriment for the gross selfishness of gluttony 
and intemperance, for the more elegant but yet polluted 
luxuries of depraved art, or for the fierce lust and license 
which would break down and overleap all barriers, and 
spoil with desolation the lovely world of domestic happi- 
ness ; — that last retreat where there are still some gardens 
of God, where there yet lingers a dream of Paradise, and 
the hopes of Paradise unfold their blossoms. 

Then has the fiery serpent coiled himself about our un- 
resisting limbs ; we breathe his hot breath ; he bites even to 
the heart ; " and much people die." 



THE SENSES. 75 

We are much exposed to this assault, after we have 
begun our journey towards the Holy Land, but are yet in 
the wilderness which intervenes between that state of quiet 
contentment without good from which we go, and the state 
of quiet possession of good to which our weary steps are 
turned. The first denials sharpen the appetite ; as the con- 
flict begins, the combatants put on their strength. But now 
we begin also to know what it is that assails us ; to recog- 
nize the sting and acknowledge the venom. Therefore it 
was in this wilderness that the children of Israel are said 
to have been bitten by their fiery enemies, and it was in 
this wilderness that they found a remedy. 

It is said, that when much people of Israel had died, 
" Therefore the people came unto Moses and said, We have 
sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against 
thee. Pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents 
from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the 
Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it 
upon a pole ; * and it shall come to pass that every one that 
is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses 
made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole ; and it 
came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when 
he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." 

When we feel the wound and know our danger, the first 
step is repentance and confession. The next is prayer to 
God for deliverance. Thus the people called upon Moses, 
and by his means, through his intercession, sought their 
safety. And so must we, when the serpent is near, raising 



* There is no authority in the original Hebrew for the phrase " set it 
upon a pole." The words mean simply " to lift up," or, more exactly, 
" to lift up as a standard." It is this idea which the Vulgate and Sep- 
tuagmt translators express. It may be added, that the word translated 
"brass " is elsewhere translated " copper," and is supposed to have been 
used in either sense. 



76 THE SENSES. 

his crest and threatening to strike ; and still more when he 
has stricken, and the burning venom is active within us, — 
then we too must look to Moses. We must look to that di- 
vine truth which Moses represented and denotes ; to that 
which is for us what Moses was to the Jews ; to that which 
has led us from Egypt, and guides our weary way, and 
utters to us the word of God. 

At first, we wish ourselves wholly freed from the senses. 
All their pleasures seem dangerous, all their influence seduc- 
tive and deceptive. We would renounce them all, because 
this renunciation seems to be the only way of escape. Thus 
the Israelites said in their extremity, " Pray unto the Lord 
to take away the serpents from us." From this dread and 
abhorrence of sensual enjoyment has sprung, in every age 
of every church, some form of asceticism. Always, this has 
been better than a depraved sensual indulgence ; and it has 
always saved many from that indulgence. It has seemed to 
be the only way of escape, because the other way was not 
fully opened to men. That self and sense bring death in 
their train is certain, and has always become obvious to all 
who have endeavored to walk in the ways of life. The 
direct and apparently inevitable deduction from this truth 
pronounced the doom of condemnation upon self and sense. 
For that even these enemies of our souls, that the very love 
of self, the love of the world, and the pleasures of sens^, 
could themselves be regenerated and made the ministers of 
salvation, was not known. It could not be known for any 
practical good, until it could be made rationally apparent ; 
and for this purpose it must be viewed as a part of, or an 
inference from, a system of truth, which, embracing all the 
laws and existences of creation, shows how the regenerate 
mind of man (who is himself a world) should be builded 
again into the image and likeness of God, with all his pow- 
ers and functions in perfect health, because in perfect order. 



THE SENSES. 77 

Hence, when the cry has gone up from humanity wearied 
and wasted in the conflict with sense, " Take away the ser- 
pents from us," it has been permitted that asceticism should 
come in answer to this prayer. For it is always " profitable 
unto thee that one of thy members should perish, and not 
thy whole body be cast into hell." 

But there is another answer; and it is higher in* the 
scale of mercy, and is given now in the opened senses of 
the words of Scripture. It tells us to lift the serpent from 
the ground ; and if we obey this command, and make the 
serpent of brass, and raise it on high, " Lo ! every wounded 
soul, when he looketh upon it, shall live." 

We lift the serpent from the ground, when we permit a 
spiritual and elevating influence to operate upon our sensu- 
ous nature. He grovels upon the earth, when we think 
no thoughts but those the senses suggest, and believe no 
truth that they do not confirm. He is lifted above the 
ground, when our minds construct upon the basis which the 
senses build a temple about which the winds of heaven 
play, and upon which the sun of heaven shines. He lies 
along the ground, when, in the endeavor to slake our thirst 
for knowledge at the fountains of science, we see in the 
mysteries of nature and in its wondrous laws nothing of 
the design which rules, the wisdom which forms, or the love 
which animates these laws, but only fortunate accidents, or 
a wonderful exhibition of some distant and unknown God. 
He rises above the earth, when the torch of science shines 
upon an ascending path, and the opened pages of creation 
become the record of the presence and operation of a re- 
vealed God, our Father and our Saviour. The serpent 
lies in contact with the ground, when, in sweet sounds and 
odors, and in the beauty of art or the greater loveliness of 
nature, we revel, and permit these things to fill our capa- 
city of enjoyment and deaden all wish for more. He rises 
7* 



78 THE SENSES. 

above the ground, when we most enjoy all beauty, because 
we know that it has been wrapt like a transparent vesture 
around the works of God, that through it his love and wis- 
dom might shine more radiantly. He grovels low on the 
earth and his poison festers into the most fatal ripeness, 
when we indulge our appetites until it is for them we live ; 
and suffer our passions to become inflamed into lusts, and 
in the gratification of them forget the sin and the cruelty of 
our conduct. He is lifted above the ground, when we com- 
pel these pleasures to hold in our thoughts their proper 
place of means, and not ends, and assert successfully the 
rightful sovereignty of affection over passion. 

But the children of Israel made the serpent, whom they 
lifted up, a brazen serpent. Are we to do this also ? . 



The moment we begin to speak of the spiritual signifi- 
cance of the metals, we necessarily excite in every mind 
wholly unacquainted with the laws of the correspondence 
between the things of spirit and the things of nature a feel- 
ing of surprise, if not of derision ; of surprise that any- 
thing so remote from actual possibility should occur to any 
one ; or of derision at the weakness or the fantasy which 
could believe such an absurdity. If we intimate that we 
do this only in a fanciful or poetical way, we are safe enough, 
and shall be listened to. But when we plainly assert that 
actual, vital truth is the necessary substratum of all true 
poetry ; or when we declare, that all the metals are made 
to exist by means of the fact that they have their own pre- 
cise mental, moral, and spiritual analogies, and when we 
undertake to show something of this, we encounter of 
course that ridicule which is the natural instrument and 



THE SENSES. 79 

exponent of ignorance. This must be so ; for it belongs, 
inseparably, to perfect ignorance, to call itself knowledge, 
and to arm itself with the sneer which true knowledge 
never uses. But when the first revelation of the earliest 
light discloses to ignorance its own nature, there comes with 
the coming dawn, a suspicion, hardly yet a hope, that in the 
infinite unknown, there may lie a few hidden treasures. If 
the dawn brightens, there may follow a belief that matter 
and nature are not all ; that what is not matter must ne- 
cessarily stand in some definite relation to that which is ; 
and that the relation of these two, spirit and matter, may 
perhaps be illustrated by a farther insight into the nature of 
him who is both, or into the nature of a living man. From 
these advances towards the truth, which a mind honestly 
and earnestly in search of truth can hardly fail to make, 
such a mind might be led, by considerations which we can- 
not now pause to suggest, to a belief, that, as matter, in the 
living man, is the envelope, the instrument, and the expo- 
nent of spirit, so the world of matter stands in a similar re- 
lation to the world of spirit. I must now, however, assum- 
ing the truth of the law and the fact of correspondence, 
proceed to apply it to the subject before us, and ask of it 
why that serpent was made of brass. 

The metals would appear to be the lowest ultimate of 
material nature. It might seem that the solid rocks should 
be placed below them. But science is beginning to ascer- 
tain, and has almost accomplished the work, that the rocks 
themselves are but metals. It is known that potash, soda, 
lime, clay, and flint, which compose nearly the whole of our 
rocks and soil, are only metals in disguise ; and a reasonable 
conjecture goes yet farther. Knowing that much the great- 
er part of the ponderable matter of the globe is metallic, 
it follows the analogies which lead one to believe that all 
may be so. Formerly the metals were thought to be very 



80 THE SENSES. 

few in number. The ancients knew but seven. About 
three hundred and fifty years ago, the pursuits of alche- 
mists brought a few more to light, and modern chemistry 
many more. The number of those known now is more 
than fifty, and it is constantly increasing. Of these metals 
some are common and abundant, and meet us everywhere ; 
others are more rare, and some are met with seldom, and 
are not easily distinguished. We might, therefore, expect 
that the correspondence of these various metals, each hav- 
ing its own specific characteristics, would be wide enough 
to include the principal genera of the elements of human- 
ity. If we would form any classification of the metals, 
these ultimates of material nature, in reference to the es- 
sential qualities or faculties of our spiritual nature, we must 
of course found it upon the general and universal distinction 
between the will and the understanding. Thoughts and af- 
fections compose the two great classes of spiritual entities ; 
these are entirely distinct from each other, and, taken togeth- 
er, form the whole of our spiritual being. This distinction 
we find in metals, in the difference which separates the red 
metals from the pale or white metals. This is a difference 
which enters at once into obvious affinity with other distinc- 
tions which separate between the will and the understanding, 
and between their various representatives. Thus love and 
truth are, in their first material form, heat and light. It is 
well known to all who are acquainted with the writings of 
Swedenborg, that there is in the heavens a sun perpetually 
shining, and the heat and light which issue from it and fill 
the heavens become the love and wisdom which fill the 
minds and hearts of the angels. For the sun of the heav- 
ens is the first spiritual form of the Almighty. Heat and 
light being thus immediate representatives because imme- 
diate effects of love and truth, this analogy is constantly 
forced upon our observation. It fills our language, and is 



THE SENSES. 81 

readily enough admitted, so long as it is regarded as merely 
metaphorical. Every one is willing to say love warms, 
and that truth enlightens. But this language is metaphor- 
ical because it rests upon a real analogy ; for it is this 
reality which suggests and originates the metaphor, and 
gives it significance and force. For the same reason, a 
red or highly colored light, as it suggests the idea of heat 
with light, is called, in common conversation, and very 
justly, a warm light or a warm color ; while a pale, white 
light is called, with equal correctness, a cold or cool light or 
color. Apply this to minerals, and we are led at once to 
the conclusion that the red metals may correspond to, and 
in the Word signify, things of the will in which there is 
affection or warmth, while the white metals correspond to 
and signify the things of the understanding, or things in 
which there is only truth or light. 

A little reflection shows us, that, if the things of the 
will or the affections be in themselves as various and di- 
verse as the thoughts or things of the understanding, they 
do not seem to be so. Thoughts take form within our 
minds, and are easily seen there. We compare them to- 
gether ; from their resemblance and difference we define 
them and classify them. We see them clearly, and measure 
them minutely, and discriminate between them, separating 
one from the other, easily. Not so with the affections ; be- 
cause they are not within the province of the understanding, 
they do not fall so clearly under the mental sight. They are 
felt only. They may be strongly and profoundly felt, but 
are not so clearly inspected, not so distinctly discriminated, 
not separated into particulars, as are the things of the un- 
derstanding. Hence we might expect to find in the lowest 
representative ultimates of nature, which are the corre- 
spondences and manifestations of these spiritual substances, 
that class which represents the things of the understanding 



82 THE SENSES. 

far more numerous, various, and divisible into genera and 
species than the class which represents the things of the 
will. And we find accordingly that but two of the well- 
known metals, gold and copper, and very few of those less 
known, belong to the latter class, while all the rest belong to 
the former class. 

There is that which is good for the mind, and that which 
is good for the body. There is that which we call good 
in reference to the things of religion, to the character and 
eternal destiny of man ; and there is that which we call 
good in reference to this world, to our daily needs and uses 
and enjoyments. There is a good which belongs to the in- 
ternal life and nature of man, and a good which belongs to 
his external life and nature ; and when we refer to these 
distinctions in the simplest form, we say there is spiritual 
good and there is natural good. So, too, there is truth which 
reveals, describes, and opens the way to spiritual good, and 
other truth which stands in a similar relation to, and per- 
forms the same office for, natural good. Or, as there is 
spiritual good and natural good, so also there is spiritual 
truth and natural truth. Let us see if we find this distinc- 
tion represented in the metals. 

We find gold discriminated from copper by important 
qualities, which give to it a superiority in worth and value 
that is not due merely to its rarity. It is indeed far more 
rare, but it is also far less destructible, and less liable to 
injury from the causes of tarnish or corrosion which it 
meets in the air, the water, and the common touch. As to 
the pale metals, among these silver and iron seem to be 
types of two classes, and about them the others may be 
grouped. These four metals appear to have been known 
during more ages and among more nations, or more con- 
stantly and more generally known and used, than any 
others. If we are satisfied that material things may be the 



THE SENSES. 83 

effects and the correspondents of spiritual things ; that the 
red metals may represent the things of the will, or in which 
there is affection, and that the pale metals may represent 
the things of the understanding, or those of which truth is 
the essential element, — we may then perhaps admit, that 
gold may represent a higher and rarer class of affections, 
and copper a lower and more abundant class ; and that 
silver may represent a higher and rarer class of truths, and 
iron a lower and more common form. In other words, that 
gold may correspond to and represent spiritual or heavenly 
good, and copper natural or external good ; while silver 
corresponds to and represents spiritual truth, and iron nat- 
ural or external truth. 

Such is the significance of these metals when mentioned 
in Scripture ; and there are many passages bearing very 
distinctly upon this difference in their signification. Thus 
it is said, in the seventeenth and eighteenth verses of the 
sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, " For brass I will bring gold, and 
for iron I will bring silver ; — violence shall be no more 
heard in thy land, nor wasting nor destruction within thy 
borders ; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy 
gates Praise." There are many other texts of similar pur- 
port, which will occur to readers conversant with the Bible. 
Very few persons would believe that these were to be un- 
derstood in their exact literal sense ; for it would hardly be 
deemed a blessing for a nation, that all its brass should be- 
come gold, and all its iron silver ; nor is it obvious why 
such a change should be connected with the cessation of all 
violence and destruction. Every one whose respect for the 
Word of God makes him unwilling to call it utterly mean- 
ingless, regards texts like these as metaphorical ; as mean- 
ing, in some indefinite way, an improvement in the condition 
of that nation. But much reverence for Scripture would 
render one reluctant to regard it as eminently fanciful, and 



84 THE SENSES. 

as expressing its purposes and its promises only in fantastic 
flights of metaphor. 

The science of correspondence, first asserting that the 
Word, in its spirit, refers only to things of the spirit, and 
next, that the things of material nature spoken of in the 
letter, are created by means of spiritual entities, and corre- 
spond to, represent, and indicate these spiritual things, upon 
this basis builds its structure. It substitutes for metaphor, 
of which the meaning is, at best, uncertain and conjectural, 
subject to no law and amenable to no authority, a true and 
exact science. By its application to texts like these, it dis- 
closes a promise to all men and nations of every age, that 
by obedience to the will of God they shall rise from nat- 
ural good to heavenly good ; and from the natural, truth, 
which is the appropriate light for natural good, to that 
spiritual light which begins to shine when the elevated af- 
fections require for their guidance a brighter and more ac- 
cordant illustration. He in whom only natural goodness 
and its appropriate intelligence prevail may be at rest ; but 
only so long as he is contented with the lowest level- of 
life. If he would ascend, he becomes conscious of his 
wants. He hungers and thirsts for the food which will sus- 
tain the new-born life within him, and give it growth and 
vigor. He sees how much of his nature opposes itself to 
good, to progress, and to elevation. He knows now what 
internal conflict is ; and there are times when " violence, 
wasting, and destruction " seem to have made the land their 
own. But when at length for his brass he has received 
gold, and for his iron silver, he feels himself under a suf- 
ficient, a divine, protection. He trusts no longer in him- 
self, and therefore he is no longer weak ; he is at rest, for 
his defence is sure ; no human hand has built the walls 
around him, no human hand opened the gates of his city of 
refuge ; for those walls are Salvation, and those gates are 
Praise. 



THE SENSES. 85 

This distinction between natural good and heavenly good 
occurs constantly in the Word, where indeed the generic 
distinctions in the qualities and attributes of the human 
character constantly serve as foundations for appropriate 
and definite instruction ; and this is expressed with bound- 
less variety and exact precision, by means of the corre- 
spondences of which the Word is full. Nor is it only in the 
Scriptures that we may find these analogies. They are 
everywhere around us. They fill creation as they fill the 
Word. And they make creation echo with its myriad 
voices the utterance of the Word. This boundless field 
we cannot now explore, nor even enter upon it. It 
would be easy to give one or two or three instances of this 
correspondence ; but not to present in a brief space ex- 
amples so numerous, so connected and illustrated, as to 
assail with much force one objection, one barrier against a 
perception of the laws of correspondence as they are ex- 
hibited in the laws and forms of nature, that is all the more 
insuperable because wholly unsuspected. This is the uni- 
versal belief in the power of accident. Most readers will 
be startled at this. There are none now who advocate the 
old theories of Epicurus and Lucretius ; none who profess 
to believe that creation is the result of the fortuitous inter- 
course of atoms. The acknowledgment of " A First Cause," 
and of the universality and omnipotence of this Cause, meets 
us on every lip. Yet they who look into their own hearts 
find accident accounting there for much that happens. If 
they listen to their own voices, they will hear its power 
frequently acknowledged ; and they might find that, in their 
system of the universe, accident has largely usurped the 
place and providence of God. If there be, or ever was, or 
ever can be", one accident, there is an end of the idea of 
God. Let no readers say : " Of course, this is so : there is 
not really any such thing as accident ; nobody thinks there 
8 



86 THE SENSES. 

is " ; — and, in the same breath, say of these analogies, that 
they are pleasing and rather striking instances of acci- 
dental resemblance. If one thing has taken place without 
the cognizance of God, and away from his influence, then 
there are limits which divide existence into what is his 
and what is not his. They only who are penetrated with 
a deep sense of the enormous folly of this thought, can re- 
sist effectually the tendencies of all common opinion to refer 
to accident whatever presents any difficulty or refuses alle- 
giance to what we are pleased to call the laws of nature. 
Such minds will perhaps pause to inquire whether it is 
more rational to refer to accident the analogies which the 
science of correspondence everywhere reveals, or to God, 
working through laws, which are not yet fully compre- 
hended, but which nevertheless possess the universality, the 
coherence, and the importance proper to laws which are 
forms and instruments of divine wisdom. 

Here I can only say, that if the serpent be considered 
as the correspondent, representative, or symbol of the sens- 
uous part of our moral and intellectual nature, and if cop- 
per be regarded as the correspondent and symbol of natural 
good, we may see that a serpent made of copper should 
symbolize our sensuous nature, when it is good and not 
evil. And if this serpent be lifted from the ground, it 
should then be a symbol of this sensuous nature lifted above 
the earth, no longer insisting that sensuous truth is all 
truth, or that sensuous pleasure is all happiness ; but ren- 
dering its indispensable service to our higher qualities and 
faculties, while it neither grovels itself upon the ground, nor 
draws them down. This serpent was not made of gold, 
because there is no way by which man may pass from 
sinfulness to internal or spiritual goodness, excepting by 
external or natural goodness. Many are unwilling to re- 
member that the command is, " Cease to do evil, and learn 



THE SENSES. 87 

to do well " ; and the ceasing to do evil is put first, because 
only through this can we learn to do well. He who does 
wickedly, and persists in it, and thinks that his excellent 
faith and sound doctrine, or his " spiritual goodness," atones 
in any degree for outward wickedness, only adds insanity 
to sin. If the senses hurt and threaten to slay us, the first 
step and the only first step, is to resist them, there, in the 
natural and external state and conduct, where they can 
be denied, and by denial subdued. If we remember also 
that Moses, who made this serpent of brass and lifted it from 
the ground, was the leader of the children of Israel through 
the wilderness, and denotes Divine Truth leading and guid- 
ing men through repentance and reformation into goodness, 
we may see why it was said, " And it came to pass, that if a 
serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld * the serpent of 
brass [copper], he lived." For if we constantly look up to 
a sensuous nature by this instrumentality reformed, re- 
generated, and elevated, and regard it as the standard of 
that which we should endeavor, constantly and earnestly, 
to co-operate with the Divine influence in rendering our 
own sensuous nature, then, although we have been bitten, 
and wounded, and poisoned, we shall nevertheless live. 



To him who has learnt the true relation of the Jewish 
Church to the Christian Church, and of the Jewish Scrip- 
tures to the Christian Scriptures, it will not be surprising 



'* As the Hebrew word translated " to set it upon a pole," means to 
"lift it np as a standard," so the word here translated " beheld " means 
literally " looked up to," and may be supposed to be used in the sense of 
regarding and acknowledging as a standard. 



88 THE SENSES. 

that a fact so full of meaning as the raising of the serpent 
of brass should be again alluded to in the Gospels. In the 
fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the third chapter of John, 
it is said : " And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wil- 
derness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
eternal life." And again, in the thirty-second verse of the 
twelfth chapter : " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me." 

I cannot withhold the declaration, that these texts involve 
and include the solution of all religious mysteries. I am 
perfectly aware that I am arraying against myself all those 
feelings which rise up in scorn when enthusiasm seems to 
be degenerating into folly, and loose and fantastic thought 
appears to supply its want of clearness and precision by 
emphasis and exaggeration. Nevertheless, I cannot with- 
hold this declaration, for I know it to be simply true. 
Would that I knew as well how to make its truth obvious 
and intelligible ! But, dim and dark as are my own per- 
ceptions of this central and infinite truth, I seek in vain 
for words which shall do, even to them, adequate justice. 

Something has already been said of the nature of the 
sensuous principle of humanity, of the evils which envenom 
and destroy it, and of its upward course through the as- 
cending stages of recovery and renovation. But if the sens- 
uous nature, when as yet uncorrupted by actual sin, has not 
strength to sustain the attacks of the great Enemy, where, 
when it is weakened, blinded, maddened, and sick with sin, 
is it to find resistance, victory, and deliverance ? 

The first element of the answer to this question is to be 
found in the doctrine which teaches that the Lord watch- 
fully preserves man's freedom, or all of it which can be 
preserved, even in man's own despite. He may plunge 
himself into evil ; he may love his bondage and rejoice in 



THE SENSES. 89 

his chains ; lie may bring around him, by their sympathy 
with his depraved affections, spirits of the worst character 
and of the strongest influence, and may bow himself to the 
very dust and place their feet upon his neck. But while he 
does this, Divine Providence still sends to him counteract- 
ing influences, so that while there is life there shall be hope. 
If reason should awaken ; if the horrible nature of sin is 
seen in the vivid illustration of its consequences, if afflic- 
tion weakens the power of evil, if an emotion of tenderness 
softens the heart through some vibration of those chords of 
love which are woven of the kindly relations of social life 
or the blessed charities of home, — if by any way or any 
means any measure of receptiveness is produced, they who 
are the friends of his soul are near and ready. Their aid 
is offered ; nor has it a less efficacy because it cannot take 
the form of words or manifest itself to sense ; for it strives 
to enter into the heart, where, if anywhere, its work must 
be done. 

But the ministering spirits whose life it is thus to lead to 
eternal life, are but ministers. They are but the mediums 
of Him who is love itself, and their love is but his love in 
them. That they always stand prepared and enabled thus 
to act as far as and whenever man will permit, and that his 
unfailing love renders escape from sin and sensuality al- 
ways possible, is a universal and an eternal truth. It is 
and ever must be coexistent with human nature. But the 
manner in which this is effected, and the means of this sal- 
vation, are very various. They differ in the different ages 
of the world, with the different races of men, and with in- 
dividuals. Still, however varying the means, the end is 
always one and the same ; it is always the great thing to 
be done for the greatest good of man. Always the divine 
mercy finds itself called upon to hold him back from self 
and from sensuality, moral or intellectual; or lead him 
8* 



90 THE SENSES. 

back if he has fallen into the abyss. Here always is the 
centre of error and of evil, of sin and of death ; and here 
therefore are they always to be combated. 

For this purpose Scriptures have been given ; those to 
which we confine the name, and others in other ages. For 
this, too, religions have been established, and rites, and wor- 
ship. For this a thousand means of instruction, direct and 
indirect, have been permitted or provided. For this society 
has been constructed, and its anomalies watched and guard- 
ed and guided as far as human freedom might permit, in 
such wise as to make its influence on the whole promotive 
of good ; and for this are wholesome impressions made and 
holy influences garnered up within the tender heart of in- 
fancy and youth, and the relations of home have their good 
work to do, and wise men have filled the world with power- 
ful truth, and good men blessed it with their example, and 
by countless means which we may discern and designate, 
and far more which are removed from our sight, the 
ever-watchful providence of God operates to "save our 
souls." 

In the literal sense of the Old Testament is the record of 
one chain of those providences which seek to save man 
from subjection to sense and sin. It is a history ; and this 
history has for its subject the dealings of God with man. 
But it is also a prophecy : it speaks not of the past and 
present only ; but of the future. Through the thick clouds 
of the literal sense, we discern the light which shines far 
onward upon things to come. It revealed and foretold a 
Saviour ; it foretold Him who was to be Immanuel, God 
with us. 

In the great fact of his coming, we have the universal 
means of salvation. Because it was to be, and because all 
events which preceded it were preparatory for it, and be- 
cause all the means which ever were used for the salvation 



THE SENSES. 91 

of man, were of the same nature and derived their power 
from their relation to this event, therefore it was this which 
they all regarded. Hence, prophecy foretold it, and it was 
prefigured by many things, and the hope of it gave shape 
to many of the legends of the religions of remote ages and 
of various forms of paganism. 

At length this great event took place. He who was in 
himself the centre of being, came forth in a new way to 
its circumference. He who was the source and summit of 
life, descended to its lowest ultimates. He who had created 
nature as the envelope, the instrument, and the object of 
his love, came down and assumed this very nature. He 
was born of a virgin. He took upon himself man's nature, 
and man's body. He took upon himself this nature, subject 
as it was to all the influences of sense. It was the fulness 
of time ; for this nature had become so corrupt, and these 
influences so strong, by the accumulated inheritance of sin 
and sensuality, that all inferior means of salvation were 
now insufficient. And the last and highest, the central and 
universal means, that which was to be for ever sufficient, 
and from which all other aids and means were to ray forth 
perpetually, was now brought into action. 

Jehovah assumed humanity, with all its tendency to fal- 
sity, and evil, and sin. We must remember that there is 
but one way in which these tendencies can be overcome by 
any human being, and this nature renewed and regener- 
ated. This way is, resistance to evil. It was to this way 
that all the means of salvation hitherto given had pointed ; 
it was by following this way only that salvation from sin 
had ever been attained. And it was in this way that the 
Lord in his human nature accomplished his great work, 
and became himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It 
was thus that he bore our iniquities, and was bruised for 
our sins, and bought us by his blood. 



92 THE SENSES. 

When man, with the divine assistance, takes up his cross 
and follows the Lord in this way of regeneration, he can 
make at best imperfect progress. He may begin the work, 
and he may make that progress therein which shall insure 
to him a future and eternal progress in the life to come. 
But with the Lord, in his assumed human nature, there was 
far more than this. He resisted all evil, all sin ; he alone 
remained, in the midst of temptation, sinless and undefiled. 
Those temptations which are permitted to assail us may 
come with desolating fury, or they may come with a seduc- 
tive power, before which it would seem that all strength 
must melt away ; they may bear the aspect of an infuriated 
and unchained hell, and their voice may seem to be the 
gathered tones of the Devil and all his ministers of wrath. 
But still they are measured ; and never are they permitted 
to swell beyond man's capability of resistance. With the 
Lord it was infinitely otherwise than with man, as was his 
internal nature. For that nature wa,s purely divine ; it was 
Jehovah. Against the Son of Man, the whole possible fury 
of all the hells raged. And all was resisted and overcome. 
His temptations began with his human life, and grew with 
his human growth. They are set forth with little particu- 
larity in the literal sense of the Gospels ; under the figure 
of the forty days in the wilderness, they are stated general- 
ly, and in the agony in the garden, in the bloody sweat, and 
the prayer that the cup might pass from him, they are pre- 
sented with distincter power. But it is wholly beyond the 
capacity of the human understanding in any state of its 
progress, earthly or heavenly, to form any adequate idea 
of this great subject. 

The way of resistance which man may follow will lead 
to his regeneration ; to the birth of a new heart and a new 
spirit within him. That same way our Lord followed ; but 
infinitely far and to its perfect end ; and it terminated with 



THE SENSES. 93 

making his assumed human nature absolutely divine ; ab- 
solutely one with the divinity within. The divine glory of 
that divine essence which is Jehovah reached and filled the 
assumed humanity. The prayer of that humanity was 
heard. " Father, the hour is come ; — and now, O Father, 
glorify thou me with the glory which I had with thee be- 
fore the world was." 

Thus was a way opened, for all men of all races and in 
all ages, to tend for ever towards the great end for which he 
came. This is, in his own words, that we may be one with 
him, as he is one with the Father. In the same way we 
may be one, but never to the same extent. For ever must 
this end be high above the possibility of human nature. 
But it may be for ever there, the unsetting star about 
which all the lights of heaven move ; the object of all de- 
sire, all effort, all tendency ; and continual progress in 
that direction may fill with joy the unending periods of 
eternity. 

That divine humanity has thus passed through all that 
man, all that any man, can ever pass through when he takes 
up his cross and follows the Lord of Life, From His di- 
vine-human experience He looks upon the humblest and 
the feeblest of the sons of men. Here is the central mys- 
tery of all religion, of all truth. Vain is the effort to em- 
brace it all with the mind ; for that would be to compre- 
hend the universe of being and of life. Vain is the effort 
to speak of it worthily with our poor words. Let me only 
say, that the lifting up of the sensual nature of man was 
thus fully accomplished. It was borne upwards to an in- 
finite elevation, and yet remains visible to man in His Word ; 
present to man in His influence ; before his thoughts as the 
guide to all goodness ; before his affections as at once the 
example of all love and the object of all love. 

Here and thus was the serpent freed from all evil, com- 



94 THE SENSES. 

posed of all good, lifted from the ground, that it might draw 
all men unto Him ; that all whom the sensual serpent 
wounds, may look upon Him and live. 



There are those who would be much offended if they 
were called unbelieving, although their whole belief consists 
in not denying ; and such persons are very numerous in 
many parts of the Christian world at this day. The cares 
of life oppress them ; ambition goads and fills their minds ; 
or a busy thrift occupies their time and thoughts ; and they 
go day after day along the trodden pathways of life, whilst 
a dull indifference to the distant things of religion and eter- 
nity grows and indurates upon them. To all such persons 
there is no difficulty in religious doctrine, no mystery in 
religious truth ; and they are very apt to wish the world 
were as wise as they, so that all religious disputes might 
terminate. They would then terminate ; because a uni- 
versal toleration would be the offspring of a universal in- 
difference. But all men are not so, and never have been 
and never will be so. Some portion of the true value of 
eternity is perceived by many ; and this value is imparted 
to religion by the fact that it is religion which proclaims an 
eternity and professes to determine its character. 

As soon as the mind is roused by thoughts like these, 
it thirsts for truth ; and when it asks the momentous ques- 
tion, What is Truth ? the answer is neither so clear nor 
so prompt as is sometimes expected. We have much truth 
given us that is plain and unquestionable, and which offers 
itself at once to an inquiring mind, and guides far and well 
a willing heart. But behind this truth lie many questions, 
which, when they occur to a sincere and thoughtful mind, 



THE SENSES. 95 

are answered neither by the suggestion that they are unim- 
portant and we need not care for them, nor by the assur- 
ance that they are wholly insoluble, and that an endeavor 
to find the true answer will but involve us more deeply in 
the darkness. 

The most important and the most interesting of these 
questions are, as they always have been, those which relate 
to the person, functions, and nature of our Lord. None 
who call themselves Christians deny to him the name of 
Saviour. And Christians in all ages have asked anxiously, 
What is this work of Salvation? by what means and in 
what manner has it been wrought ? 

In all ages of Christianity has this question been asked ; 
and when a new church declares that it has been almost 
always answered erroneously, it ought to assume the bur- 
den of accounting, generally at least, for this long and con- 
stant error. 

The opposition between human nature and religion, 
which is implied by the universal necessity of religion, is 
the sufficient cause for much of this. Religious truth is 
given to man, that by its light and influence he may do 
that which he neither would nor could do otherwise. It 
does not conform to his inclinations, but resists them ; and 
they of course resist it. Hence his whole nature, or, in 
other words, all his natural tendencies and inclinations, are 
opposed to religious truth, as they are opposed by it. Yet, 
when any question comes up as to the construction or sig- 
nificance of any religious doctrine, or truth, or principle, 
these tendencies and inclinations enter into the council. 
They demand to be heard. It is impossible to reduce them 
to total silence ; it is difficult to prevent them from raising 
a loud and disturbing voice. Hence, when those questions 
came before the Church which are involved in the doctrine 
of the Lord, — we cannot be surprised that the natural ten- 



96 THE SENSES. 

dencies and inclinations which are the antagonists of re- 
ligion should endeavor to neutralize this central truth, or 
bring it over to their side, when we remember that this 
doctrine is the central truth of the Christian religion, and 
that all religion requires well-doing as the basis of well- 
being. And how ? By so construing this doctrine of the 
Lord as to make it support the falsehood that well-believ- 
ing is a higher and greater thing than well-doing, or has 
any independent value of its own. Hence the doctrine of 
Salvation by Faith alone ; and out of the necessities of this 
doctrine grew that dogma of a Trinity of Divine Persons, or 
of three Gods, which is its support, and without which Sal- 
vation by Faith alone falls instantly to the ground. We 
cannot be surprised that human nature should desire and 
endeavor to substitute this falsity for religious truth ; how- 
ever we may mourn that the endeavor was crowned with 
such success. 

This success could not, however, have been so complete, 
but for another cause. And this cause is, the almost en- 
tire ignorance of the spiritual sense of the Gospels, and the 
consequent belief that they record, in their literal sense, 
the whole of the Lord's doings. No error can be greater 
than this. It is indeed infinitely great. 

While our Lord was visible upon earth, he was con- 
stantly employed here in works of mercy and of instruction. 
His words pointed out the way of life, and his works illus- 
trated his words. Some of these works and words the Gos- 
pels in their literal sense record ; and thus also describe, gen- 
erally but forcibly, the sufferings and temptations of our Lord. 
But while he was leading this life upon the earth, he was 
also living in the spiritual world. He did not leave the 
heavens when he bowed them and came down to earth. In 
the spheres of spiritual existence, among and upon the my- 
riads who were there, he was all the while doing the great 



THE SENSES. 97 

work of the Redemption. It was there that he redeemed 
man from the controlling influences of hell, by bringing all 
the hells and all who are in them into order and subser- 
viency. Not into the order of heaven, but into their own 
order. Into such an order as prevented the enslavement 
of man. Henceforward man was redeemed, because no evil 
influences could evermore act upon him any farther than 
was compatible with his freedom. The encroachment of 
evil upon good had gone so far, that all equilibrium would 
have ceased, and with it the freedom and the life of man, 
had not this work of Redemption been accomplished in 
this way. 

It would be wrong to attempt speaking in detail of such 
a subject as this, in the brief manner which alone would be 
possible now. In this connection, and at this time, it is 
enough to say, that the works of love and power wrought 
by our Lord in the natural world were not disconnected from 
those works which he was at the same time, and by a simi- 
lar exertion of his divine qualities, effecting in the spiritual 
world. These were, indeed, connected somewhat as the soul 
and the body ; for what he said and did here, on this lower 
plane, was as the body, as the ultimate or basis of the 
divine operations he was then performing upon those lower 
planes of spiritual being which rest closely on our natural 
life. Our human life descends to us from God. He is the 
centre of being. But the life flowing forth from him, and 
flowing through the series and spheres of existence around, 
finally comes to us so tempered and modified by these liv- 
ing mediums, that it may be precisely accommodated to 
us, and qualified to enter into us and become our life. It 
is only by this full and unceasing influx that we live ; but 
the lowest planes of spiritual being are nearest to us ; there 
the last form and pressure are given to that life which is to 
become our life. Hence the condition of things upon that 
9 



98 THE SENSES. 

plane is one among the most important elements which go 
to make up our character and destiny. This condition had 
become such, that these media of life exercised a most in- 
jurious influence ; and of the work which our Lord there 
effected, I must content myself at present with saying that 
its full accomplishment absolutely required his incarnation, 
or his complete assumption of our external nature, and of 
the admission to that nature of all possible temptations from 
infernal influences. In this way he opposed himself to that 
sphere or those media of life, there, where their force is 
concentrated. By subduing them there, he reduced them 
permanently to their own proper order and use. And the 
effect of this is to redeem all men from the certainty of de- 
struction, and offer to all the hope and the promise of sal- 
vation from sin, on condition only that they are willing to 
accept such salvation. 

If the objection occurs to any reader, that this is an in- 
direct and circuitous procedure, altogether unworthy that 
absolute Omnipotence which, with one word of power, could 
command all worlds, — he may find it well to remember 
that the same word of power might as well annihilate the 
hells, extirpate all evil, and convert earth into paradise 
and the human heart into an exhaustless wellspring of love 
and bliss. But nothing like this is done. The scheme of 
life is complicated. Its many threads are interwoven into 
that which is inextricable confusion to him who has not the 
clew which is given by a just idea of the order of Divine 
Providence. For Providence acts by means, and in ac- 
cordance with the laws of its own order, and upon and in 
reference to every individual being of all worlds, in exact 
conformity with that being's individual nature, functions, and 
requirements. The constant observance of this law gives to 
the workings of Providence an appearance of indirectness 
and complexity. But he who forgets this law can see in 



THE SENSES. 99 

the system of being nothing but insoluble mystery, and the 
whole heaven above him is but one cloud. 

While the great work of spiritual redemption was going 
on in the spiritual world, our Lord was, we have said, in 
this natural world, doing corresponding works and uttering 
corresponding words. From this correspondence two con- 
sequences flow. One, that our Lord's life on earth was, 
as has been said, the ultimate, the basis, the body of his 
contemporaneous spiritual operation in the spiritual world. 
The other, that while the Gospels in their natural or literal 
sense relate and describe his life and operations in this 
natural world, they also, in their correspondent spiritual or 
internal senses, relate and describe his spiritual operations 
in the spiritual world. In the Old Testament there are 
many passages which distinctly refer to the coming of our 
Lord in the literal sense, and many others which are often 
supposed to have this reference, although in the letter it is 
obscure and uncertain. But when the internal or spiritual 
sense is opened to us by the law of correspondence, we find 
throughout the Scriptures a fulness of meaning, and a direct- 
ness of application to our Lord, which we had not suspect- 
ed. So far as we comprehend this spiritual sense, we find 
ourselves in the condition of those disciples of whom it is 
said, " Then opened he their understanding, that they 

might understand the Scriptures These are the words 

which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all 
things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of 
Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, concerning me. 
.... Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, 
and to rise from the dead the third day." "We see and we 
know, in some degree at least, that it indeed thus behooved 
Jesus Christ to suffer for the salvation of man. The reason 
of our Lord's coming and the manner of his operation are 
opened to us, because we have the Word of God and the 



100 THE SENSES. 

Gospel of Christ as it exists in the heavens, and as it re- 
cords his doings in the spiritual world. 

All this, of course and of necessity, is absolute nothing- 
ness to them who receive only the literal sense, and who 
reject the light of the living soul within. In the earliest 
ages of Christianity, the conviction that there was a spir- 
itual sense to the word of God was very general, and an 
effort to discover it was common. This fact is usually 
spoken of now, by those who write of early Church his- 
tory, as "a prevailing habit of or taste for allegorizing." 
Some belief of this kind continued to exist and exert a 
considerable influence through all the ages of Christianity. 
But the creeds and dogmas of the Church were formed with 
no reference to it. It is most true that all doctrine must be 
formed from, and founded upon, and proved by, the literal 
sense of the Word ; but it is also true that this basis of 
doctrine must be the literal sense, illuminated and ex- 
plained by the light within. And the literal sense taken 
alone, the literal sense so used that it becomes " the letter 
which killeth," afforded in many texts some apparent con- 
firmation of that falsity of salvation by faith alone to which 
the natural disposition of man is ever so strongly inclined. 
These texts speak of our Lord as " bruised for our sins," 
as " bearing our iniquities," as " washing us from our sins 
in his own blood " ; and it seems to be plain, from many pas- 
sages, that He, the Lamb of the great sacrifice for the sins 
of the world, was prefigured by the whole Jewish ritual of 
sacrifice. All this is indeed most true. But it is not true 
in any sense which should lead us to think that the work 
of salvation was done for us and in our stead, leaving to us 
only the necessity of belief as the condition of gathering 
its fruits. It is true in a sense which, were it not tempered 
and obscured before it reaches us, would make our hearts 
faint with the feeling of the unutterable love which re- 



THE SENSES. 101 

deemed us from ourselves at such a price ; and we should 
see that an equal wisdom had provided that this should so 
be done, as to give to all the need and the power, and, to 
all who will accept it, the blessing, of co-operating in this 
work with the Lord himself. 

In our brightest moments, when our minds are clearest, 
and the overarching sky of thought appears to glow and 
burn with unobstructed light from Heaven, then, even then, 
it is but a feeble ray which can pierce the exhalations that 
are ever rising from the earthliness of our habitual thoughts 
and cares. But the very truth we have above stated shines 
in the heavens, not in the light, but as the light. itself. 
There, in the unclouded mind and in the constant thought 
of every angel it abides, the perpetual illustration of heav- 
enly life, and the unfailing and abounding source of heav- 
enly joy. 



It was one of the purposes and one of the effects of our 
Lord's incarnation, to render possible, at a future period, the 
revelation to man of the Scriptures of the angels. The 
universal and perpetual end of Divine Providence is the 
conjunction of earth with heaven ; of men with angels, and, 
through the angels, with himself. But this end is ap- 
proached gradually, because the preservation of human 
freedom requires this ; and it is approached in the direc- 
tions and by the means which are compatible with this 
freedom. To the Jews, little of the light of Heaven was 
given in the literal sense of the Word ; not so much even 
as might testify of the existence of another world ; for all 
truth of this description would have been to them but the 
means of mischief. When our Lord walked among men, 
9* 



102 THE SENSES. 

he uttered words which carried their thoughts beyond the 
grave ; and even then, in the world to which he was guid- 
ing their thoughts, he was so operating as to meliorate its 
influences upon men, and also to provide for the possibility 
of a further melioration. The judgment which he wrought 
when he said, " Now is the judgment of this world ; now 
shall the Prince of this world be cast out," — was effected 
by his operations in that world where lie the causes whose 
effects we see. And this judgment was itself a preparation 
for a further judgment which should place man in a con- 
dition to receive a more abundant influx of the light of 
heaven. This further judgment, also to be wrought in the 
spiritual world, and to become visible in the natural world 
only gradually, and through its effects, was to take place 
when, and in such wise, that it should not deprive man of 
his freedom and of the free exercise of his own rational- 
ity ; nor, on the other hand, expose him to the danger of 
learning truths which would be beyond the possibility of 
his voluntary adoption. For such truths must needs be 
rejected and despised, and thus bring upon him deeper in- 
jury- 

The manner in which this last judgment was to be ac- 
complished, the means and the process of this spiritual 
work and the effects it would produce, were, in the begin- 
ning of the Christian Church, related prophetically in the 
Apocalypse of St. John. That judgment has taken place. 
The great work has been fully accomplished in the spiritual 
world. Its effects are already reaching into this world and 
manifesting themselves here; and among these effects is 
the explanation of the prophecy which predicted this judg- 
ment. This explanation is itself effected by a revelation of 
those laws of correspondence which establish between the 
worlds of nature and of spirit the relation of effect to 
cause. They show that all that exists here is at once the 



THE SENSES. . 103 

effect and the manifestation of causes which operate there. 
They make the whole material creation the letter of the 
whole world of spirit ; and they reveal, within the literal 
sense of the Bible, another Word of God, another Gospel, 
which is the life and soul of all that was given to us be- 
fore. 

Especially is it to be known, that all of these works of 
the Divine power and mercy are wrought, that He may be 
for ever more and more " lifted up " before the eyes of men, 
to the end that He may thereby " draw all men unto him." 
The reason of this, the reason why this should be the per- 
petual end of Divine Providence, grows out of the relation 
between God and man. 

For, as we have repeated occasion to say, God creates 
man to give to him of the elements of his own divine nature. 
That is, to give to him of his own love and wisdom. Not 
merely that he may be the object of this love, but that it 
may itself enter into the heart or will of man, and become 
in a degree, however imperfect or qualified, the love of the 
man himself, and thus be to the man a source of happiness. 
This the Lord wills to do, because this love, in himself 
and as his divine love, is the source of his own divine and 
ineffable bliss. So of his wisdom, which he would impart 
to man's understanding similarly, and for similar reasons. 
But in all this the freedom of man must be respected and 
preserved, or there is no love ; because to this, voluntary 
choice, liberty, and free agency are essential. 

Hence it follows, that, while man, in the exercise of this 
freedom, cannot prevent this divine love from flowing into 
and animating his will, for this would be to destroy the life 
of his soul, he may nevertheless modify and qualify this 
love into accordance with himself, and may carry this 
perversion so far as to convert it into self-love, which is its 
opposite. If, then, it is the perpetual effort of Divine Provi- 



104 „ THE SENSES. 

dence to lead man to receive voluntarily His divine love 
into man's own will without perversion or corruption, so it is 
the perpetual effort of the nature of man, in the degree in 
which that nature is evil and unregenerate, to pervert and 
corrupt this influent love into its opposite, which is self-love. 
Hence we must regard self-love as the great enemy of our 
happiness ; and we may then understand why the Divine 
Providence always acts with the purpose of opposing this 
deadly venom by its proper opposite and antidote, — the 
love of the Lord. 

Whoever would construct any true theory of religion, 
must build it upon the fundamental truth, that the love of 
the Lord is the exact opposite and true antidote to the. love 
of self. For these two loves are exact antagonists. Where 
the one is, and in the exact degree in which it is present, 
the other must needs be absent. And hence the constant 
endeavor of Providence to fill our hearts with the love of 
God, because it overcomes and excludes that love of self 
which is the mother of misery ; and because it is itself the 
source of happiness, and gives birth to that love of the neigh- 
bor and all the kind and pure affections which in their com- 
plex constitute heaven, and fill the mind with heavenly in- 
fluence and peace. 

Very sad is the delusion which sets apart the love of 
God as a thing by itself; as opposed to the common pleas- 
ures and common interests of innocent life ; as narrow- 
ing the circle of our affections, and weakening the hold of 
the social ties, and saddening the countenance and burying 
the living man in the cold grave of asceticism. The mind 
is incapable of conceiving a greater falsity. Pursue it into 
all its details and consequences, and the exact opposite of 
every one of them is the truth. It is easy to account for this 
falsity. It separates the love of God from all other affec- 
tions, because God himself has been first separated from his 



THE SENSES. 105 

creation. If, in our minds, he stands apart, then we must 
go apart from the world to find him and to love him. Un- 
speakably false, unspeakably dreadful, is this common and 
prevailing delusion, which makes men fear to love God, as 
if this were loss and renunciation ! First, give us the truth 
which restores God to his creation. First, fill the universe 
of being and of affection with his sunlike presence ; and then 
our love of God embraces creation. In all that is good, it 
finds him. In all that constitutes true happiness, it feels 
his touch. It gives at once force and tenderness to every 
bond. It multiplies a thousand-fold all the interests of life. 
It invests these interests with a new charm and power 
and loveliness. It fills all the moments of every day with 
a cheerfulness responsive to the goodness of Him, to whom 
they are all devoted in joy and in hope. Hence the New 
Church, by means of which the Lord is now seeking to re- 
vive and establish among men that love of God which will 
bring heaven to earth, discloses those laws of being which 
make Him ever present, and which teach us that His own 
presence is the absolute and essential condition of all life 
and all existence. 

Great difficulties in the consideration of this subject spring 
from the present state of the human mind, and the prevail- 
ing and habitual tone of thought. After so great a diver- 
sity of religious dispensations ; after the possession by Chris- 
tians of the Gospels and the truths they tell for many ages ; 
after the preaching to mankind of these truths in countless 
forms by the countless sects of Christendom, we refuse to 
believe that almost nothing has been gained. But if a just 
doctrine and just thoughts concerning God are the essence 
and the substance of all religious truth, and if that doctrine 
and those thoughts alone are just which never leave us 
without the recognition of his presence ; which tell us con- 
tinually that it is He, He in the form of his own love, who 



106 THE SENSES. 

is always within all the substances and energies of nature, 
always giving to them all they have of form, activity, and 
operation ; which announce to us at every moment, that He 
is there, within us, really and actively, seeking to bring us 
into conformity M T ith himself that we may receive more 
fully an unperverted life from him ; if this doctrine and 
these thoughts alone are just, how little has been gained ! 

The very philosophy of religion tells us as a simple truth, 
that our love to God measures our true life, and forms and 
determines our true happiness. It does not tell us that we 
should not care for our brethren, nor for our uses and em- 
ployments, nor for the enjoyments which lie within our 
reach. For it takes a wider view of our relations and our 
destiny, and of the causes which determine our destiny. It 
bids us be active and earnest in the work we have to do ; 
and seek and love the manifold innocent pleasures which 
the world offers to the innocent ; and hold with a firm grasp 
upon the social and family relations which surround us with 
their sustaining atmosphere. But in all these things we 
should always recognize, not only that they are the present 
gifts of God, but that he gives them because they are the 
very instruments by which he can work within us and for 
us, at every moment, with most advantage to us. When 
we say that this recognition should be instant, constant, and 
earnest, we say that which would be read with astonishment 
were it not that the words seem to be meaningless, and to 
many persons must needs be so. 

" The poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind," 

is far wiser than they are who have been tutored by the 
prevailing influences of society and the dense and over- 
shadowing darkness of religious belief, into seeing him no- 
where. When one hears words uttered which remind him 
of the command, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 



THE SENSES. 107 

all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
and with all thy strength," such words may seem to be 
words of course, which are not intended to have much 
significance ; or to be enthusiastic and fanatic, and to savor 
of religious insanity ; or to be anything else whatever, ex- 
cepting a calm and deliberate enunciation of a truth which 
is" in its own nature intensely practical. This truth is 
known in heaven, and there it is the actual law of life, and 
of all the moments and acts of life ; and it comes down from 
heaven to build up in man a capacity for heavenly happiness. 

Our love of God is no solitary nor unfruitful thing. It 
is his own love, received by us in our wills and returning 
to him by that reciprocal action on our part which conjoins 
us with him. If there were nothing for us to do, we might 
as well be stocks or stones or dead. But there is much, 
for us to do. When God gives into our wills that love 
which is his own life, there is much for us to do, for we 
have, by our own free and voluntary action, to return this 
love to him, as the love of him. It is for us to make it, 
still with his aid, the love of Him who is the legitimate ob- 
ject of all love, because the source of all good. Where this 
love reigns, it gives rectitude to all the affections, for it is 
itself just ; it gives light to the understanding, for it is it- 
self in conformity with the strictest truth. Where it is 
wholly wanting, other affections savor of robbery and in- 
justice, and other thoughts and truths want clearness and 
consistency, because the central truth of all is unknown or 
denied. 

This love of God is not solitary nor unfruitful. For 
where it reigns, we love all other things because they all are 
his, and are all in a greater or a less degree exponents and 
instruments of his love and wisdom. And we love them in 
proportion as they are so, because we know that in that 
proportion they are good. Then is the whole earth trans- 



108 THE SENSES. 

figured before us. The realms of nature are but the jew- 
elled dress of God. Calamity itself, even when its face is 
sad, speaks to us in soothing tones. The hours of day 
and night, the changing seasons of the solar year and of 
the year of life, the vicissitudes which color with alternat- 
ing gloom and brightness the fortunes of men and nations, 
these are but a choral song of many harmonies in which 
a listening ear catches an echo of the hymns of heaven. 
Our love of God, as it makes us feel that we and all men 
are but recipients of one common life from one Father, 
gives us a sense of brotherhood, before which discord, 
anger, hatred, and oppression pass away and become im- 
possible. Therefore it is said, the second great command- 
ment, " Love thy neighbor as thyself, is like unto the first" ; 
for it is but the first in a derivative form and in its closest 
application. 

So far as we perceive, on the one hand, that this ideal 
might be actual, — not to-day nor to-morrow, but at some 
of the periods of time which may hereafter be born of the 
eternity, — that this might be the prevailing condition of 
the human mind ; and so far as we perceive, on the other 
hand, how wofully distant from this ideal is now the actual 
state of man ; the reason may become obvious to us why it 
is the constant tendency of the dispensations of Providence 
to "lift up" before the eyes of all men Plim to whom their 
love and worship are due by every title and on every 
ground. And we may see also something perhaps of the 
manner in which his being " lifted up " may become the 
means by which he may " draw all men unto him." But 
when we would apply this principle to the comprehension 
of these various dispensations, we must not forget that es- 
sential and eternal condition which demands the constant 
preservation of human freedom. For this cause has there 
ever been such delay, such accommodation in the manner 



THE SENSES. 109 

of this manifestation, and such measure of illustration, as 
might lead man in the right direction, just as far as he 
could be led willingly and sincerely, but not one step 
farther. As this possibility increases, the light which is 
constantly striving to break forth from heaven is permitted 
to come down with less and less obstruction. 

As an illustration of this, we might refer to the universal 
fact, that to all races in all ages something of the Divine 
nature and existence is disclosed, while this something va- 
ries almost indefinitely. Or, better perhaps, we may glance 
at the relations to each other in this respect of the three 
consecutive churches, — the Jewish, the first Christian, and 
the New Jerusalem. 

That God was One, Omnipotent, Eternal, and Ever- 
present, was revealed to the Israelites. He stood before 
them as Almighty, as Power itself. But how far was this 
revelation transcended when God himself stood upon earth, 
and by his works and words taught that he was also 
Love ; — impartial, universal, infinite Love. A greater 
truth than this could not be revealed. But in the church 
which is now being established it is illustrated with a larger 
portion of Heaven's own light. The revelations which have 
been made as the foundation of this church place him 
before us always, everywhere. Truths and principles are 
now given which are as wide and will be as permanent as 
creation. They have but begun to dawn upon an awaking 
earth. We cannot yet imagine whither they will bear the 
mind of man. But even in their imperfect twilight, which 
mingles the darkness of a passing night with the promise 
of a coming day, we see and know some things with cer- 
tainty. There are some truths which rise like the mountain- 
tops above the region of clouds, and catch the earliest ray, 
and spread below like mountain-bases, vast and immova- 
ble. Thus, we are sure that the so-called laws of nature 
10 



110 THE SENSES. 

are but the forms of his ever-flowing, ever-living wisdom ; 
that it is his presence which animates all the forces of na- 
ture, and fills the dead mass of matter with the similitude of 
life ; that it is his love which comes as vital warmth to the 
hearts of angels and of men, and goes with the glad cur- 
rent of the blood as it bears onward its affluence of life to 
all the corners of the frame. It comes to the earth in the 
warm sunshine, and breathes in the breath of spring ; and 
kindles all the feelings and emotions of the animal world, 
and climbs the tree with the ascending sap, and paints 
the blossom, and ripens the wholesome and delicious fruit. 
Not that it does all this through laws which it has made 
and left, or agents who supply its place ; but that it is there, 
itself present, formative, animating, active, and the only. and 
the constant and continual cause of all causes, of all forms, 
all life, all action. The day cannot be very distant when 
Science will no longer be content to point to Him as the 
distant source of being, but will begin to proclaim with all 
her voices, that in all her realms and provinces the one 
thing that she looks for is his universal presence ; and by 
the degree in which she discovers this, she will measure 
her approach to the consummation of her labors. 

Nor let it be feared that Science will thus be drawn from 
her proper field, or become enthusiastic or fanatic ; for this 
fear springs from the falsity which separates God from his 
works. It disappears as we learn that his presence not 
only gives and sustains being and form, but warms all the 
charities of life, and quickens all its manifold activities, 
and imparts to all its varied uses their fitting meed of hap- 
piness. 

In all ages of the world there has existed among think- 
ing men some disposition to recognize God in his creation, 
and to regard all things as manifestations of him. But this 
has too often been a mere deification of nature. Even this 



THE SENSES. Ill 

may be better than the utter denial or forgetfulness of God. 
There may be within this error germs of truth, to be quick- 
ened when the mind is opened to better influences. But 
the great corrective of this error, one before whose reful- 
gent light it cannot for a moment stand, is the doctrine of 
Immanuel, or God with us. Hence the church which is now 
by its truths making God manifest in his works, is operating 
with yet greater power and clearness to illustrate the doc- 
trine of the Divine Humanity. It consents that Philosophy 
and Poetry should point to the wondrous exhibitions of his 
power, and say again, " These, these are but the varied 
God " ; but only on condition that religion shall lead them 
both to the feet of Jesus Christ. 

The love of self is the root and centre and animating 
spirit of all evil. But its form and aspect are indefinitely 
diversified. It exists and operates on many different planes 
of thought and life. Sensuality is, as it were, its lowest, 
most general, or universal expression. But it also takes 
sometimes the appearance of covetousness or of some other 
of the gross and vulgar forms of self-love. It is, however, 
compatible with all excellence of external behavior. For 
a man may shun all open sin, and give alms, and be very 
useful, — and do all this from the love of self. He may 
expect his reward in the applause of men, in the advance- 
ment of his position in the world, or in promoting his suc- 
cess in life. He may find full recompense for his self- 
restraint in the complacent belief that, of his own strength 
and by his own unaided efforts, he has become better than 
other men. He has done the work, and he gives himself 
the glory of it. He is a God unto himself, and his appar- 
ent virtues are the morning and evening sacrifice upon 
the altar of self. This is the last, and it is the worst form 
of self-love. It is idolatry of the most dangerous kind ; it 
is a falsity which fastens itself upon the heart with terrible 



112 THE SENSES. 

force. But it is a falsity which shrinks and dies before the 
influence of the New Church. For this reveals to man the 
true connection between principles which must otherwise 
appear inconsistent and incompatible. It shows us, that 
while all is derived from God, and while all is of the pres- 
ent power of God, there is yet much for us to do. When 
the Apostle bids us " work out our own salvation with fear 
and trembling, because * it is God who worketh within us, 
to will and to do, of his own good pleasure," he seems not 
only to bring together irreconcilable propositions, but to 
place them in the relation of cause and effect. How many 
have pondered over these words until the eye was dim and 
the heart sad, and the hope of so comprehending them as 
to lose no part of the truth they contain grew weak and 
died. But the connecting link is now given ; and both 
parts of this system of salvation are seen to be true, and 
each is seen to be true because the other is so. And this 
connecting link is found in the truths which teach us, not 
only that God is ever operating within us, but how he is 
ever operating. 

Thus it is that He is now " lifted up," — that he may draw 
all men unto him. Neither self-love, nor its offspring, sens- 
uality, is extirpated. The evil influences which breathe 
out this poison have not perished, nor do they slumber ; for 
they are active and strong and earnest. At every ear are 
they whispering; and every heart are they endeavoring 
to corrode. But if we will look, not with the eye of 
thought only, but with the heart and with love, upon Him 
who is now lifted up before our view, — in despite of the 
thronging influences which from the mansions of death 
press around and upon us, — we shall live. And every 
individual in whom this state of mind is established, and 

* The word translated " for " is used in the sense of " because." 



THE SENSES. 113 

every church and race when and where it is triumphant, 
will bear the name with which, as the consummating bless- 
ing, the Prophet Ezekiel closes the description of that city 
of God whereby is prefigured the reign of God on earth : 
" And the name of that city from that day shall be 
The Lord Is There." 



10* 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 



The conditions of human life vary, and have ever varied, 
indefinitely ; for no two of woman born ever passed from the 
cradle to the grave through precisely the same path. When 
this path is shortest ; when but little of the air of earth is 
consumed, and that little spent in the wailings which con- 
nect death with birth, even these cases may be discrimi- 
nated, each from its sad brother. But in one thing all are 
alike. The first breath is a painful breath ; and the being 
born is very painful. The providence of God, which never 
ends, begins with all who live, in permitting severe suffer- 
ing. This suffering, and death, are the only universal 
states; the only ones through which all must necessarily 
pass. As if the universal foundation for all the discipline, 
direction, and guiding influences of a never-ending life was, 
of necessity, pain. 

And through all this infinite variety of life, there runs 
the same element of unity. Always, under some form of 
mental or bodily pain, sorrow has declared its presence and 
claimed its share ; for wherever there has been human life, 
there has been human sorrow. The very hnagination re- 
volts from the conception of one who has accomplished his 
whole journey with no accompaniment of grief. It is as if 
in proof of this universal necessity, that the first indication 



118 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

of independent personal existence in the new-born babe, is 
that cry of anguish which declares that, whatever may be 
the duration or the circumstances of his future life, he has 
already begun to suffer. 

Why is this ? Or rather, before we begin to look for its 
cause, let us reflect upon the argument in favor of an over- 
ruling Providence, which might be drawn from the fact. 
For if the countless millions who live and have lived, were 
amenable to chance only, it would seem to be capable of 
demonstration, that some must needs wholly escape what 
in its accumulation and intensity would overwhelm others. 
That the waters which gird in this solid globe do not rebel 
against their appointed limits ; that the resistless and dev- 
astating tide and wave acknowledge a bound and a con- 
trol ; that the moisture which in one measure or another 
touches every spot of earth, — in the form of the soft 
dew, of the gentle or the violent rain, the brook, the river, 
or the ocean, — never accumulates into limitless and all- 
destroying masses ; this fact is admitted by science and 
reason as a sufficient ground for the certainty, that it is 
subjected to a positive, a potent, a sovereign Law. And so 
it is with the waters of affliction. Sometimes they overflow 
the soul until it seems for the moment that the fountains of 
the great deep are broken up, and can never again be 
sealed. But the waters retire ; the bow of promise bright- 
ens the retreating clouds, and the dove of peace finds a spot 
whereon it may rest. The waters of affliction ! The whole 
atmosphere of human life contains them ; every place which 
man calls his homeland everything he gathers about it, 
acknowledge their presence ; and yet they too, in their ac- 
tion and their diffusion, respond to the chorus of the dew, 
the rain, river, ocean, proclaiming that God reigns, and 
reigns over them. 

Our first inference, then, the first law which we assert, 
is, that sorrow is God's servant. 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 119 

Every man's sorrow is his own. " The heart knoweth 
its own bitterness." As no man is altogether like to any- 
other, so no man's sorrow is altogether like that of another. 
With every one it is individualized. So, too, must the 
design and purpose of each man's affliction be peculiar and 
individual. Nevertheless, the fact of sorrow being univer- 
sal implies that it has some universal aspect that all may 
contemplate ; and that there must be for its measure and 
its government some universal law. Where shall we find 
the truth that will teach us this law ? 

Let us begin with seeking it in its simplest form ; let us 
look at the subject in its simplest facts. 

Sorrow comes quite often from disappointment. Wishes 
which recognize an impassable barrier are then its parents. 
And sometimes this is so, when it is not obvious. Let us 
take poverty, for instance. The dread of this calamity, or, 
if it seem far off, the wish to enlarge the chasm which sep- 
arates us from it, stimulates the universal labor of man- 
kind. Of most men's lives, the narrow circle consists of 
continued toil as the price of continued subsistence. There 
are those who are lifted above this necessity ; but they do 
not constitute a large class of the human family ; and of 
this portion, perhaps the larger part engage in or seek some 
pursuit by which their means may be made yet more abun- 
dant. Far or near, the spectre of want terrifies ; and not 
always when it is far does it seem to be so, for the vision of 
avarice or fear is often morbid. 

But in what consists the evil of poverty? Sometimes, 
no doubt, when it is extreme, it may be physical suffering ; 
for starvation is a terrible reality, and makes its presence 
known by its pangs and by the relief which death brings, 
now in the crowded haunts of the great city, and now on 
the desert shore or waste. But this is rare. Food, shelter, 
raiment, enough to preserve life and to prevent actual suf- 



120 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

fering, are common things, and are seldom wholly out of 
reach. Laws, and the charities which leave few wholly 
isolated, respond to the merciful purposes of Providence ; 
and when any one succumbs to such a want as this, it is a 
case of remarkable exception. 

But poverty has other pains ; common enough ; consti- 
tuting a prominent feature of all social life ; continually 
before most men as a danger ; and always suggested when 
poverty, even from a distance, threatens its dreaded visi- 
tation. These pains consist of disappointments. They 
stand before our purposes or our wishes as an insuperable 
barrier. They cut oif our means of doing what we would, 
for ourselves, for our children, or for others. Our desires 
may rest on habit, or upon an aspiration for that which we 
have not yet possessed. They may be ambitious, or sens- 
ual, or neither ; kind or selfish ; conformed to or forbidden 
by the laws of society ; but so far as they are of the earth 
and earthly, poverty comes to crush them all remorselessly ; 
and in this threat, or in this fact, we feel its sharpest sting. 
The inference is then irresistible ; the great evil of poverty 
is its opposition to our wishes. 

If we take sickness as another common cause of sorrow, 
it may be the common and first impression, that here the 
proportion of things is changed, and that physical suffering 
is now the great evil ; but a further consideration may show 
that it is not altogether so. There were once those who 
denied that pain was an evil ; and if it be viewed by an ex- 
tent of vision which shall take in both its cause and its 
purpose and effect, there may be truth in this denial ; and 
perhaps in their denial there was more of this truth than 
their bare words indicate. But these words, in their direct 
and simple meaning, express a great falsity and a great 
folly. Pain is an evil, and sometimes a dreadful evil. It 
is not always, however, the greatest evil of disease, and not 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 121 

unfrequently constitutes its smallest part. For disease 
arrests all action. It substitutes the forced and unfruitful 
repose of the chamber of sickness for the energy which in 
the counting-room or the office, or in other pursuits, at 
home or abroad, was earnestly pursuing its objects, and 
perhaps gathering in the daily accumulation of those stores 
which we were heaping up for future enjoyment. We 
were getting more wealthy or more famous ; at all events, 
we were busy ; we had objects which we were pursuing 
with the ardor that hope gives under the stimulus of per- 
petual approach. And in mid-career, a strong hand grasps 
us, — and holds us. We stop, and we almost forget the 
pain of its pressure, in the more painful fact that it com- 
pels us to be still while the slow days pass by, creeping 
under the heavy burden of disappointment. 

And if we look on Pain itself, on that species and de- 
gree of physical suffering which, at the first glance, seems 
to admit of no reference to desire or to disappointment, we 
read there no different lesson. Its great agonies suppress 
with crushing force whole classes of desires ; so utterly, 
that, for the time at least, they are forgotten, unknown, and 
unsuspected. Lust, ambition, avarice, fade away, and pale 
their fires before its fiercer flames. There is great signifi- 
cance in .the Oriental mythos, that appears so often in the 
fragments of that ancient literature which has reached us 
only in fragments, and which Beckford in the terrible tale 
of Vathek, and Southey in his poem of Kehama (to which 
we referred in an earlier Essay, to illustrate the Oriental idea 
of penance), use with so much effect. In this last, the Hin- 
doo Prince, by his powerful enchantments and his fearful 
penances, had acquired far more than human power. From 
the vantage-ground of his vast sovereignty, he sought, and 
successfully, to snatch from the gods some portion of their 
mi^ht. Not earth only, but heaven and hell, were moved to 
11 



122 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

their depths. The last rite at length consummated, he goes, 
with befitting pomp, to seize the sceptre of the conquered 
god of the infernal world. He beats down all resistance. 
The ruler of the dismal realms he had invaded holds forth, 
at his bidding, the last and greatest treasure, which was to 
consummate his triumphant career, and make that triumph 
perpetual ; — and this was the " Amreeta," or cup of im- 
mortality. The strong, bad man takes it exultingly, and 
drinks. But there lies a mystery within it that his almost 
omniscience had not fathomed. The living liquid derives 
its quality from himself ; and it becomes fire in his veins ; 
and the man who thought himself a god is no longer a 
man, but a mass of fire that cannot die ; and he stands 
stricken, powerless, helpless, and then goes to his place of 
eternal doom, unable to resist, able only to suffer, not pun- 
ished only, but quelled and conquered by suffering. 

Yes, suffering opposes, suppresses, and subdues desire. 
Sometimes we cannot refuse to see this in ourselves or in 
others. Oftener, perhaps, we might see it if we would ; and 
perhaps yet oftener, latent germs of evil, tendencies to sens- 
uality or to the love of self or the love of the world, known 
only to Him who knoweth all things, are thus checked be- 
yond the power of future development. Who will say 
how many of the seeds of sin are burned in the fires of 
suffering ? It is a fact forced upon the cognizance of all 
who observe and consider, that our tendencies to evil some- 
times seem to await only the first possibility of activity, and, 
like some diseases, so come forth as to compel the belief that 
they were born with us and were a part of us at our be- 
ginning. To him who remembers this, and also the some- 
times suppressive power of suffering over sin without any 
aid from moral or voluntary co-operation, the belief may 
come, that even the sorrows which hang over the cradle 
have their appointed use. And consoling indeed is the be- 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 123 

lief, that the pain which utters itself in the cry of the babe, 
that inflicts upon the heart of the loving parent a greater 
pang than it expresses, may also do its work, and suppress 
some germ of what would be a wrongful desire, and make 
the path to heaven easier and surer, whether it is to be 
brief or long. 

If we leave these special instances, and take a more gen- 
eral view of life, we reach a similar result. How very 
large a part of our common sorrows and anxieties, of those 
from which no day, no hour, is wholly free, spring from the 
same cause ; from unsatisfied desire or threatened disappoint- 
ment. Fear, in some one of its myriad forms, is, with most 
men, a frequent if not a constant guest. It is an apprehen- 
sion of the loss of that which we desire to keep because we 
love it, or of a failure in some effort or some hope for that 
which we desire to have. True, fear is sometimes lost in 
the sense of present grief ; we suffer so much, we have no 
fear of suffering more. But then — putting aside the case 
of physical agony — we shall often, if not always, find that 
this grief springs from disappointed desire. 

What, then, is the general inference from these facts ? It 
is, that sorrow opposes itself to desire. And as we have al- 
ready affirmed that sorrow is the minister and instrument 
of God, we reach now another inference ; — that he uses 
this instrument to disappoint, to suppress, to remove, or to 
prevent desire. 

All desire ? No ; because there are desires which he 
would neither prevent nor disappoint ; and it is precisely 
these desires from which no sorrow springs, and which sor- 
row does not destroy. They come to us from realms which 
sorrow has not invaded ; and they invite, and guide, and 
urge us thither. Angels inspire them ; for they have found 
in them their happiness, and would impart that happiness 
to us. Even these desires may be accompanied by grief or 



124 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

fear. We may lament, and bitterly, that others whom we 
love turn away so resolutely from an offered blessing. We 
may mourn that we are ourselves so far, so very far, from 
the goal that we would reach. But in this sorrow there is 
nothing opposed to the wishes which seem to bring it upon 
us. Do not these very desires burn all the more ardently, 
are they not fed rather than extinguished, by this grief ? 
If the sight of one we love, hastening on a downward path, 
inflicts a blow upon us, does it deaden our desire to hold him 
back ? If the deep feeling of our own unworthiness inflicts 
upon us a pang, does a lesser desire to be cleansed from our 
impurities grow out of this pain ? , Not so. There are, in- 
deed, very many desires against which sorrow does not op- 
erate ; and between these, and all of those which it is the 
office of sorrow to kill, there is an abyss, an infinite abyss, 
wide as that which separates heaven from hell. And it is 
only those desires which are wrongful or harmful from 
which sorrow springs; and only against these is sorrow 
used by Him who permits it to exist. 

If we have acknowledged that sorrow is the instrument 
of God, and that he uses it for the suppression of desire, 
and if we know that he is good and wise, then must we be 
certain that he uses this instrument for this purpose, be- 
cause it is that which is best adapted to this purpose. 

Most men's reflections and experience, if we let them 
speak the truth, confirm this conclusion. All of the desires 
which we may suppose that God would willingly suppress 
in us, may be referred to the love of self or the love of the 
world. And it is precisely these two loves which sorrow 
does attack, and, so far as we permit, extinguish. Poverty, 
with its plain attire, and simple food, and modest home, and 
humble position, strikes a terrible blow upon the strong 
devil of pride. We may save our pride, nevertheless. We 
may open to it the refuge of envy ; and there it will sit and 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 125 

brood upon the wrong and injustice which makes us less 
than others. Or we may let our pride feed itself fat upon 
our fancied pre-eminence in mental or moral excellence ; 
and we may waste our lives in sullen grief that so much 
power and so much good have no power of manifestation. 
But then poverty is useless to us because we make it so. 
For if we would permit it to scourge away the fiends whom 
it attacks, as soon as its work was done, it would turn to us 
with a smile upon its face ; and though it might abide with 
us to guard us from the return of our enemies, it would 
be no longer a sad and mournful guest. It is the love 
of the world which sharpens and envenoms the sting of 
poverty. 

And sickness, when it exposes the weakness of our 
strength, when it lays us prostrate and dependent, when it 
asks for the tender care which softens pain's hard pillow, 
when it requires the self-sacrificing watchings of day and 
night and the perpetual kindnesses of the sick-room, — does 
it not read to us a lesson against self-love, which some do 
not hear, and many forget, but which, learnt, understood, 
and remembered, may well make us bless the visitation ? 

" They fear not God," says the Psalmist, " because they 
have had no changes." So is it always with the children 
of men. We grow hard, and proud, and selfish, in continued 
prosperity. The world ministers to our love of it. We 
lift up our heads and believe — although we may not whis- 
per even to ourselves a folly so outrageous — that it is our 
world, and was made for us. And then we love our neigh- 
bor, because he is as our servant and feeds our luxury or 
our pride ; and we are indignant when any one calls this 
self-love. And we rejoice in our success, because it is a 
proof of our strength, and pity the unfortunate as weak and 
silly people, who would have been as rich and great, and as 
much " at ease in their possessions," as we are, if they had 
11* 



126 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

been as sensible and judicious in their plans, or pursued 
them with as much vigor. Would it be merciful in the 
Divine Providence to permit and confirm this state of 
mind ? Yes, even this might be, if it sprang from a disease 
of the heart so stubborn and inveterate that the very rem- 
edy must make it worse. There are such persons ; and 
they are left to go on in their own way, with little check or 
hinderance. But there are not many such. For though 
the instances may not be infrequent where adversity is not 
permitted by them on whom it falls to do what it might do, 
those are not numerous in which it cannot. When sorrow 
may help us, it does not always help us, for that is as we in 
our freedom may determine. But when it cannot help us, 
then it does not come. Providence for ever respects that 
freedom of the will and act which it establishes in man as 
the basis and condition of all improvement ; and whenever 
sorrow may do its work, there and there only is it permit- 
ted to exert its influence. If we may be checked in our 
mad and downward career, if the clinging love of the world 
may be made to unfold its destructive grasp, if the love of 
self may be stifled or even weakened, then comes the gift 
of fear, of sorrow, of disappointment. Each day enables 
us, if we will make use of the providence of God, to give 
up something of the false loves which were burning our 
life away, and offer it as a sacrifice of reconcilement. At 
first we may make our offering as to an offended and pun- 
ishing God. But as the healing work goes on ; as self 
ceases to be the idol of our worship ; we go as the repent- 
ant son to the Father, who comes forth to meet us. Then 
we understand those words of mercy, " Whom he loveth, he 
chasteneth." 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 127 

Death is the great grief of life. The fear of it is the most 
universal and the most powerful of all the common fears 
that haunt us. It is seldom that unhappiness which death 
will end deprives it of its terror. They who struggle 
through life, and look back with but little of pleasant remem- 
brance and forward with but little hope, generally approach 
the termination of their wearied being with no diminished 
dread. And when they who stand by the dying or the 
dead, and are not lifted by the truth above the desolations 
of the scene, mourn and shrink away, how much of their 
anguish comes from the fearful thought, that what they 
look upon foretells their own inevitable doom. All must 
die ; and why has Providence armed this only one of all 
possible events which none can avoid, with such dreadful 
terrors ? He does this, not merely that this door of escape 
from life may not be rashly opened by impatient sorrow ; 
but because, when that event which must happen to all is 
made thus terrible, there may be before all men, between 
them and their vices, between fierce passion and utter self- 
abandonment to sin, one great Fear. Therefore has He 
permitted clouds blacker than the midnight to rest upon the 
grave. They rest not on every grave ; but on that which 
he sees before him whose thoughts stop with death, and 
reach not to the life beyond. In the full, clear light which 
revelation, which God's Word, now pours upon these clouds, 
they disappear, or, if they still hang there, the midnight hour 
has passed, and they are clouds of the morning, bright and 
glowing with promise. 

But for the untaught or unbelieving, death has but one 
name : he is the King of Terrors. This is most wise, most 
merciful, in our Father. And they who still hold to the 
belief that for certain crimes the punishment of death should 
be inflicted, find their strongest argument to be that no 
other barrier so effectual could be built up against the terri- 



128 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

ble depravity which commits these crimes. It has been 
said, and it may be true, that before a man can be urged 
to the offences which alone, in our modern codes, are pun- 
ished capitally, he must pass under the influence of pas- 
sions and of lusts, which could hear no reason nor stop to 
calculate, but might still shrink before this grim spectre. 
All such offences it has not prevented ; many it has ; and 
when we leave the institutions of man, and recur again to 
the providence of God, we must remember that, if man 
places this doom before the guilty, God places it before all ; 
and who shall say how many evil propensities — some at 
their first birth, others at a later maturity — may have 
been encountered, suppressed, and extinguished, by this 
awful fear ? 

And yet views of this kind may lead one into an error. 
The more clearly we discern the divine instrumentality 
of sorrow, the more we may tend to the belief that God 
produces sorrow for the sake of its use. This would be a 
great error. We may best guard ourselves from it, by a 
comprehension of the Divine Providence as it acts through 
laws of permission. 

It is impossible to pursue to any extent any inquiry into 
the ways of God with man, without encountering that 
principle of human free agency to which we have often al- 
luded. Beginning from this point, the most general state- 
ment of the laws of permission may be this. Man — every 
man and always — may choose evil rather than good ; may 
do evil rather than good ; for otherwise he could not choose 
good rather than evil, and thereby freely co-operate with 
the Lord in his salvation. Because some men do choose 
evil, therefore moral evil, and a vast mass of it, exists in 
the world. Good, by its own order, and of irresistible ne- 
cessity, leads to happiness. By the same absolute law, it is 
good only which leads to happiness ; and evil, or sin, which 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 129 

is the opposite of good, leads to that which is the opposite of 
happiness. The Lord desires neither moral evil nor the con- 
sequences thereof. He would have all men good and all men 
happy. And it is the constant effect of his ceaseless provi- 
dence, that all men are as good as they can be made truly 
willing to be, and that the amount of happiness in the world 
is as great, and the amount of misery as small, as can be 
without the violation and destruction of those laws of order 
and of mercy which are the source, the foundation, and the 
eternal preservative of all happiness. Here the divine 
mercy stops ; because it is wise, perfect, divine mercy. It 
does not sacrifice the freedom of man to prevent partial 
evil; because by this sacrifice all good would perish. There- 
fore He permits evil, and permits the sorrow and the misery 
which flow from it. His own divine order, his own nature, 
his own mercy, require the permission of sorrow ; and then 
when evil exists and by its own necessity produces sorrow, 
He uses this sorrow in the cure and destruction of the evil 
from which it springs. He does not call sorrow into being ; 
man makes it and all of it ; and when he has made it, his 
Father receives it from his hand, and uses it, not in anger 
and as a punishment, but in mercy, and as a means of de- 
stroying that very thing from which it derives its origin. 

The connection between moral evil and suffering is not 
always apparent. Sometimes it lies very deep, and very 
often, when it comes to the surface, the eye that would not 
see is turned away. Earthquakes and tempests bring ruin. 
Fire burns, the wave overwhelms, or the angry wind dashes 
the mariner and his fortunes, by no fault of his own, against 
the relentless rock. The air, without which we die, and 
which circles the earth that we may live, drops along its 
path the seeds of disease, and plague reaps the harvest. 
Or some little change takes place in seed or soil or atmos- 
phere, and food fails, and famine leaps forth from its squalid 



130 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

retreats and shows its ghastly face to nations, and at the sight 
they die. Where — when — whose — the sin which causes 
all this misery and all this destruction ? 

One answer to thoughts like these bids them turn from 
there obscurities, to that enormous proportion of human 
sorrow, which we may be certain comes from a violation of 
the laws which the Lord has revealed, or impressed upon 
nature. And then it bids us add to this mass that hardly 
less amount of suffering which comes from what are called 
accidents and inevitable calamity, but which might have 
been, nay, surely would have been, avoided or greatly 
mitigated, if neither sin nor folly nor imprudence prepared 
for them and helped them. 

Nor let us forget the law of inheritance. The child in- 
herits from his parents a portion of their good and of their 
evil ; of their strength and of their weakness ; or rather all 
of it, although but a small part may be excited into devel- 
opment and manifestation. This has always been so, and 
therefore the whole past is accumulated upon the present. 
And it often happens that traits of character, moral tenden- 
cies, or physical qualities of a distant ancestor return to live 
again in a remote offspring, while there is little resemblance 
to the immediate parent. And they bring with them their 
consequences of sorrow or of joy. 

But the most general antidote to the error which would 
disconnect sin from suffering is supplied by the science of 
correspondence. For that tells us that the whole world 
without us is responsive to the world within. Hence its 
mingled order and disorder, good and evil ; hence, too, its 
general ministry to the uses of life and health and comfort 
is so limited and restrained and interrupted ; and hence, 
too, it often puts forth its forces in forms of hostility and 
destruction. 

We are taught by the doctrines of the New Church, that 



THE MINISTRY OP SORROW. 131 

in the heavens this correspondence of the outward with the 
inward is special and perfect. There, in that perfect organ- 
ization, they are together who are brought together by affin- 
ities of affection and of life. Hence the world about each so- 
ciety is common to all who look upon it and live upon it, and 
equally responsive to all. Formed of spiritual substance, it is 
the adequate home of spiritual beings, whose spiritual bodies 
are no longer clothed upon by natural bodies. It is abiding 
and permanent as are the essential elements of their charac- 
ter ; and it is also changeful and progressive with the 
changes and the growth of their ever-advancing faculties 
and affections. But in this world all live together, during 
their appointed time. The good and the evil, of all kinds and 
all degrees, mingle together, and they meet mingled good 
and evil in their encounter with the world without them. 
For this outward world does not respond specifically to 
each man, but to the whole race, to man. Hence follows 
what would seem, in our imperfect view of it, utter confu- 
sion. And it is indeed full of confusion and disorder. But 
these are controlled by infinite wisdom, and love, and power. 
And therefore, while they are left responsive to man's gen- 
eral nature, they are made in all their particulars, in all 
their influences upon individuals, in all the aspects they 
present to each man at any and at every moment, exactly 
that which he most needs, and that which, if he uses it 
wisely, will be to him of the greatest use, and lead him 
forward in the path of his best happiness. 

Perhaps we may express the one great end for which 
sorrow is permitted to exist, and is used, in the most gen- 
eral terms, by saying that the great work of sorrow is to 
make itself unnecessary and impossible ; or, in other words, 
that sorrow is allowed to come into being and exert its 
power only that it may destroy its cause and itself, and so 
perish. 



132 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

In the fulfilment of its mission, it labors constantly 
under the condition of respecting man's free agency ; his 
liberty of choice and life. Therefore it does not always 
accomplish that which it always seeks to accomplish ; and 
where it does this best, it does it slowly and imperfectly ; 
for it can do it only so far as man wills that it should. The 
probations of life require, to make them effectual, that free- 
dom of will and of act, the misuse of which often makes them 
ineffectual. But they do not desert us therefore. Along 
all the paths of life, sorrow attends us ; for by all of them 
and near to all lie pitfalls and abysses from which it would 
save us. If these abysses are openings from the lower 
deeps, if sorrow comes from them hot and fierce as a blast 
from the realms of woe, its very violence may stay the foot- 
step which was tending thither. Along all these paths 
sorrow attends us, goes with us, a clinging friend ; and be- 
cause it goes with us, they may all lead to the gates of 
heaven ; and there Sorrow stops. To us, and not to her, are 
they opened ; nor does she strive to enter therein, for sin is 
not there, and she would have no work to do, no aliment 
on which to live. The remembrance may come ; the 
thought of the sad causes which gave sorrow being, and of 
the sad work it had to do, may visit the angel, and then 
the sky grows dark over his head as with the shadows of 
approaching night ; but soon this thought gives way to ex- 
ulting gratitude, to humble and yet joyous adoration of 
Him whose love has led his children into his own peace ; 
and a day brighter than before chases the darkness away. 
In heaven there is little sorrow, for it is the appointed 
work of sorrow to make men repentant, pure, and good ; 
and only when that work is done is there any heaven. 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 133 

In this view of the origin and effect of sorrow there is 
much, not only of consolation, but of practical instruction. 

Let us repeat the conclusions to which we have come. 
Sorrow springs from evil. It is permitted to spring from 
this cause, because it may itself become the best remedy 
for the moral disease which makes it possible. It is so 
guided and governed as to exercise the strongest influence 
in this direction which man's free agency permits. And 
when sorrow has done its whole work, then the cause of its 
existence, and the divine permission of its existence, both 
cease. It follows, therefore, irresistibly, that we may do 
much to hasten this termination, this natural death of sor- 
row, by co-operating earnestly in the work which the sor- 
row came to do. But this is a task to which we are not 
naturally inclined. "We find it much easier, when we are 
suffering, to exhale our anger or our grief in complaint 
or lamentation. We ask sympathy. We put forth the 
claim of the miserable, and insist upon the privileges of 
wretchedness. But to what purpose ? Very little to the 
extinction of our sorrow, and often perhaps we so keep it 
alive, and deepen it into despair. But there is a better 
thing for us to do ; it is to find out what that sorrow has 
come from, and what it has come for. 

We shall pursue this inquiry in vain, if we do not look 
far behind the circumstances which appear to be its im- 
mediate parents. They are but its occasions and opportu- 
nities ; its causes lie far deeper. These we shall seek with 
the greatest probability of success, if we examine carefully 
what evil this sorrow rebukes and puts to silence ; what 
bad habit it breaks up ; what cherished folly or iniquity of 
thought or act it assails ; what change or reform it sug- 
gests ; what error or falsity, what illusion of the heart, 
what want of truth or faith, gives its force. Then we are 
looking for the cause of sorrow in those regions of our be- 
12 



134 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

ing where its causes lie. We may or may not find it 
here ; but certainly we shall not find the true cause of 
sorrow in the outer realm of external agencies. 

We may or we may not find it ; this is always uncertain. 
For so complete is our ignorance of the laws and influen- 
ces which determine character, and indeed of the elements 
which constitute character, that we have little right to ex- 
pect that we shall always succeed in any inquiries which 
we must pursue in so thick a darkness. But it is also true 
that we may often find the true cause of our sorrow. Every 
one who has endeavored. to discover by the help of his sor- 
row that evil or that want which gives it origin or poig- 
nancy, to the end that he may put the evil away or supply 
that want, can bear testimony that very often he sees, plain- 
ly as in the light of noon, what work this visitant was com- 
missioned to perform. And then comes the question, Will 
we co-operate in this work ? 

It would seem to be as capable of demonstration as con- 
clusions of this kind well can be, that if sorrow is permit- 
ted only that it may produce a certain effect, then, if we 
can discover what the desired effect is, and if we can by 
our co-operation accelerate this effect, or make it more com- 
plete, most certainly we may thus accelerate the termina- 
tion of this sorrow ; we may render it less severe by lessen- 
ing the need of its severity ; we may make its departure 
more perfect, and guard against its return, by enfeebling or 
suppressing the causes which produced it. 

Such might be our reasoning ; and it would be painful to 
believe that there were not many who could testify to the 
truth of this reasoning with all the certainty of experience. 
For there are those who have formed the habit of encoun- 
tering sorrow thus, whenever it assails them. They look 
at once towards its moral cause and origin, and its moral 
purpose. The very effort brings consolation and hope ; for 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 135 

it strengthens in their minds and gives new life and vigor 
to their strong conviction, that He who bade the stormy sea 
be still, holds this sorrow in his hand. They cannot sorrow 
as without hope ; despair dares not draw near to them. And 
they would tell, — yea, in despite of the unbelief and scorn 
of the very many to whom such words would express the 
very farthest reach of folly, — they would tell how often 
they thus find the cause of their sorrow, and by attacking 
the moral evil which it attacks, they thus mitigate that sor- 
row or remove it entirely, as surely as a skilful physician 
arrests or removes a disease, when he knows or applies its 
specific remedy. 

Often may this be done by many ; but by none always. 
For there are none who may safely be intrusted with so 
great a power over their afflictions. And then when sor- 
row comes, as from the bosom of a cloud, born of darkness 
and bringing darkness, and the deep midnight of its pres- 
ence is itself a heavy pain, and we feel an utter inability to 
explain it, to comprehend it, to do anything but suffer, — 
does this great sorrow bring with it no airs from heaven ? 
Yes ; and they will breathe upon us with healing and re- 
freshment, when we have used aright this opportunity to 
strengthen our Faith ; when we have resisted the devils of 
doubt and of denial, and they have fled ; for this good it has 
come, if for no other. It will help us to believe, more than 
before, and to know better than before, that, as the wind 
bloweth where it listeth and we know not the sound thereof 
nor whence it cometh nor whither it goeth, so the Spirit does 
its work. 

Such severe visitations do not come to all, nor perhaps to 
many ; but their heavy hand is upon some. And well may 
it be, that in those sad moments when the sufferings of a life- 
time seem compressed into one abiding pang, and all sense 
but that of grief and loss and fear is paralyzed, and hope 



136 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

itself knows not how to hope, and we wait with an en- 
forced silence until the desolation shall pass by, — it may 
well be, that even then the mercy of God is most tri- 
umphant, even then the Spirit of God is doing for us and 
within us his mightiest works. 



It is impossible to consider sorrow under any of its relig- 
ious aspects, without remembering those suffered by our 
Lord and Saviour. We refer to the temptations in the 
wilderness, the agony in the garden, the bloody sweat, the 
cross. Yet when we approach this subject, we pause before 
its holiness ; we fear to tread within the precincts ' of its 
sanctity. 

To the New Church Jesus Christ is Jehovah. "We be- 
lieve that the words " The Father and I are one " express 
a Truth, — a central, an absolute, an infinite Truth. The 
mind of man has been tasked, either to build upon these 
words great falsities, or to explain them away, to deprive 
them of meaning and of force, to clothe whatever mean- 
ing is left with an envelope of naturalism ; for the natural 
mind is prone to treat this truth, when it fails to cast it 
wholly away, as the natural body treats a foreign and a hos- 
tile substance lodged within it, which it cannot cast off, and 
therefore invests with a covering woven from its own sub- 
stance. And yet this Truth remains, and, thanks be to the 
infinite mercy of God ! there it will live for ever. 

In the endeavor to explain the sufferings of Christ, from 
the earliest ages of Christianity there have been those who, 
knowing no mode of escape, or perhaps not seeking any, 
have fallen into the error which is called, in the technical 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 137 

language of theology, Patripassionism. This name defines 
itself; it means that the Father, Jehovah, suffered all that 
Jesus Christ suffered. Various opinions have been adopt- 
ed by those who would avoid this error and yet retain the 
doctrine of the divinity of Christ. But the opposite ex- 
treme of this error, and by far the worst of the many 
methods by which it was resisted, and, in our opinion, the 
worst of the heresies which have desolated the Church, was 
held by many of those who were known as Gnostics, and 
especially by the Docetists. This falsity rapidly grew into 
a system ; generally stated, it was the doctrine that the 
whole life of our Lord on earth was merely an appearance ; 
a phenomenon without reality. Perhaps the history of 
human thought does not exhibit a more vivid example of 
an absolute denial, under the pretence of sincere acknowl- 
edgment. An absolute denial ; for what denial of Christ 
can be stronger, than that which declares his whole life to 
have been not so much as the shadow of a substance, but 
only the picture of a false idea. For this doctrine main- 
tained that the life of Christ on earth presented a series of 
appearances, which were only semblances intended to sug- 
gest useful truths, and produce a strong impression. "And 
the pretence of belief was maintained by building with as- 
siduous labor a whole fabric of theory, which was based 
upon the assertion that Jesus Christ was an appearance of 
Jehovah. 

Neither Patripassionism nor Gnosticism does the New 
Church adopt ; to neither of them does it incline. 

We believe that our life is from God, and is his ; that he 
is always within us, as the cause of our being, whatever be 
the form that we give to his influent life when it descends 
within the reach of our free agency. He is within us all, 
and always was, and ever will be ; for our good, for our 
guidance, for our salvation. But when this was not enough, 
12* 



138 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

or rather, when new means might be employed to make this 
more efficacious, then those means were used. 

The fulness of time had come. The sins and vices of 
mankind had gone on accumulating, until the measure was 
full. And sinful men had passed into the other world, and 
there become the mediums of sin and evil influence, until 
there, too, the power of evil had fully ripened, and the free- 
dom of man was ready to perish before the growing night 
of sin. 

Then Jehovah assumed a human nature. Born of a 
human mother, this nature partook of human infirmity, of 
human liability to error, of human danger, to their full ex- 
tent. Of the work done in, upon, and by means of this as- 
sumed human nature, we must speak, if we would speak of 
the greatest goodness of God, and of the highest means of 
salvation. 

When, with faculties which fully comprehend nothing of 
the world our feet press and our fingers touch, we would 
look upon the chief work of the Infinite, what hope can 
we have of comprehending this ? Of fully comprehending 
it, none ; for it would be strange indeed if the greatest in- 
volved less than the least. But there are means by which 
we may begin to comprehend it, and may enter upon a path 
where progress will be infinite, because it leads towards the 
Infinite. 

These means are given us by the analogy or correspond- 
ence between whatever is above, or causative, and whatever 
is below, or effect ; between the means employed, or the 
glorification of the assumed human nature, and the effect to 
be produced, or the regeneration of our nature. 

God is man ; perfect and divine man. From him, as 
man, comes the possibility that we too may become truly 
human ; not divine as he is, but human, as an image and 
likeness of the Divine. Hence a clear perception of the 



THE MINISTRY OP SORROW. 139 

laws and method of that work of regeneration which is the 
end of our being, and an unfailing conviction that we are 
the children of God, and created in the image of our Father, 
will help us to understand his greatest work, — the glorifi- 
cation of the personal humanity assumed by him. 

We are born without actual sin, but with the possibility 
of and a tendency to all sin. Into these tendencies, or some 
of them, the life of evil spirits flows, and constitutes that 
part of our life. For all of our life comes to us through 
spirits. And these are such as exactly correspond to us : 
because it is this correspondence which opens the way from 
them to us, and so enables us to live. That life which does 
not suit us, and is not adapted to and appropriate for us. 
could not be received by us, and could not become our life. 
If no life flowed into us but that which we could not re- 
ceive, we should have no life, and should not live. There- 
fore, that we may live, it is one of the laws of our being that 
affinity shall determine, always and exactly, who they are 
who shall be mediums of life to us. Such spirits are, by 
the fact of this affinity and the attraction which grows out 
of it, brought nearest to us, and come into spiritual contact 
with us, and impart to us a life which we can receive, and 
make our own ; and by which we can therefore live. 

And then another law of our being comes into play ; and 
that is, the law of our freedom. By virtue of this, we 
may change our associates ; we may make ourselves capa- 
ble of a better life than they can give, and then they will 
leave us, and others will come to us who can give us this 
better life. Or we may make ourselves incapable of so 
good a life as we receive, and then we sink down upon a 
lower plane, and receive from those who live there a lower 
life. 

We speak of associates ; for there are more than one. 
All men have in them something that is good, and some- 



140 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

thing that is evil. Good spirits come to us through what- 
ever we have in us that is good, and evil spirits through 
whatever in us is evil ; and thus our composite life is given 
to us and received by us. 

If it were not so, no man could be saved ; no man could 
become better than he is. For when, in the exercise of our 
freedom, we resist the influence of evil spirits and refuse 
to receive their life, we should die, were it not that the bet- 
ter life we have sustains us, and then a good life from good 
spirits, from new heavenly associates, flows in to take the 
place of the evil life we have wasted and rejected. And it 
is thus that we begin the work of improvement or regenera- 
tion, and may make a perpetual and indefinite progress in 
this work. It is our internal man which uses our freedom 
to this effect ; which resists evil, and puts it away from our 
external man, and thus permits new and better life to flow 
down into our external, and make it one with the internal. 

In a similar manner, when our Lord was on earth, to the 
infirmities and evil tendencies of his human nature all evil 
spirits came, and strove to fill them with their own life and 
bring them forth into action. This is presented symboli- 
cally in the account of the temptations in the wilderness ; 
for it was this which constituted our Lord's temptations ; 
and it is this which is meant when it is said that he was 
" tempted in all things as we are." But by the strength of 
his internal man, which was Jehovah, all of these efforts of 
the evil were resisted and defeated. This was a gradual 
work ; occupying the whole earthly lifetime of our Lord, 
as it should occupy our earthly lifetime. And the result 
was the regeneration of his assumed humanity, as the re- 
sult of similar resistance and similar victory is our regen- 
eration. 

Thus far we have endeavored to exhibit the analogy be- 
tween our Lord's life on earth, and our own. Let us now 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 141 

look at the points of difference. And all of these may be 
said to arise from, and to be implied in, the one great dif- 
ference, that this work is in us always and of necessity 
partial and incomplete. In him it was entire, perfect, 
absolute. 

To us, no evil influences are admitted but those which 
we may overcome, although often it seems not to be so. A 
temptation comes with the might of a lion. Resistance 
seems as impossible as if the lightning smote us, or a rush- 
ing river bore us away in its fury. We say, and we think, 
we cannot resist. But it is the desire to yield which 
prompts this delusion, and makes us think this falsehood ; 
for a falsehood it always is. There are those who habit- 
ually and complacently yield to their impulses, and content 
themselves with saying that they must do so now, but will 
do better when they can. How is it possible for them ever 
to know what they can do ? There are others who rebuke 
these persons, and pity their mistake or despise them for it ; 
because they themselves generally resist, — they have cul- 
tivated self-control, and have principles and govern them- 
selves by principles, — and only now and then, when the 
temptation is very strong, do they yield to it, and say they 
must yield. And then they forget that they are uttering the 
same falsehood — the same in itself, however less in quantity 
and measure — that they rebuke in others. For it is always 
false that we are exposed to evil influence and solicitation 
which we cannot resist. We do not mean that the equilib- 
rium is always exact. On the contrary, it is perhaps never 
so ; for we are almost never in the condition of absolute indif- 
ference. Human freedom neither means this nor requires 
this. The scales vary, and sometimes one and sometimes the 
other ascends. Accordingly as the influences which affect us 
are disposed and determined by Divine Providence, we are 
sometimes more and sometimes less solicited to evil. If very 



142 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

feebly, then is it easy for us to be good ; if more urgently, 
then is resistance more painful and difficult. But at the 
worst, this resistance is never impossible ; for that is a con- 
dition of being which does not now belong to this life, al- 
though it once did ; for then should we be possessed by the 
devils. 

To our Lord also, in his humanity, all temptations were 
admitted; for that humanity was strong with the might 
within ; and to that there were no limits : it was the Divine 
Omnipotence. 

True it is, that it is the same strength which resists and 
overcomes in us as in him. Of ourselves we have no 
strength ; He it is who within us worketh to will and to do ; 
but always under the sovereign law, the immutable con- 
dition, which preserves unimpaired our personal individu- 
ality and freedom. Therefore is this strength within us 
restrained and limited by us. It is not ours ; but it is 
given us to use as our own. And it can be put forth only 
in such ways and in such measure as shall be determined 
by ourselves. 

In Him there was no limitation, no restraint. The 
strength against evil was almighty, not only as it existed 
in his humanity, but as it was put forth hy that humanity. 
Therefore, all the hells were admitted to assault, to tempt, 
that humanity. 

" 111 wast thou shrouded then, patient Son of God." 

But the Father was within ; and the arm of his omnipo- 
tence was bared, and the whole might of evil was encoun- 
tered and defeated and subdued. 

When we yield to an evil influence, we strengthen and 
feed the life of that spirit from whom it comes to us. For 
it is thus he lives ; we thus give him an opportunity to 
do that which he loves best to do ; and we give to him 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 143 

all the confirmation and force, which, as all know, we give 
by indulgence to any propensity. This spirit of evil can 
thenceforward assail us more vigorously ; and not us only, 
but all others. On the other hand, every time we resist and 
disappoint him, we enfeeble him ; we do something to make 
the evil in him weaker, and when he next assails us or 
others, he will do it with less force, and it will be easier for 
us or for others to resist and overcome him. From this it 
follows, that the very best thing we can do for others is to 
be good ; and the worst thing we can do for them is to be 
evil. For when we are good, it is by efforts which will 
make it easier for others as well as for us to be good in the 
same way. And when we indulge ourselves in sin, we 
make it easier for others as well as for ourselves to fall 
under the same temptation, when next it threatens them 
or us. 

But when we do our very best, we do comparatively lit- 
tle in this way. We have checked and weakened some of 
the myriad influences which, ascending from the kingdom 
of evil, seek to precipitate us thither. We have sent back 
to their dark abodes, stricken and debilitated, those who 
came from them to impart to us a portion of their own de- 
struction. And it may be truly said, that the evil spirits 
whom we have thus overcome will never again be so strong 
as they would have been, had we gratified them by indul- 
gence and strengthened them by exercise. 

Precisely this was the result of our Lord's conflicts and 
victories ; but this result was then infinite and universal. 
All evil influences attacked him. There were no tenden- 
cies to sin in human nature which they who had lived in 
the indulgence of those sins, and had so gone down into 
darkness, and then and there become the embodiment of 
those sins, did not find in the humanity he assumed, and 
endeavor to rouse into activity. They were all resisted, all 



144 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

conquered. He remained pure, sinless, and undefiled. No 
spot or stain from hell could cleave to him. And all the 
enemies of good yielded to his perfect goodness, and found 
themselves, all and for ever, defeated and subdued. 

Why did he not extirpate them ? Why not, at least, re- 
move them far from the possibility of tempting us ? Why 
not, as he had conquered all of them, save for ever all of us, 
by one exertion of his divine omnipotence ? 

Because this was not within the purposes of his divine 
wisdom. Had he so done, the means would have been 
wanting for that equilibrium between good and evil, with- 
out which there could be no free choice of good rather than 
of evil ; and without this there were no foundations on 
which the heavens could rest. It was not merely out of 
mercy to the infernals that he permitted them to live the 
only life they can live. But, in his infinite wisdom, he 
combined the most perfect mercy to them with the most 
perfect benevolence to man. He reduced them to order, 
and subjected them for ever to the force of those laws which 
permit them to excite in man so much only of their own 
evils, as shall leave man in full and perfect ability to resist 
them and reject what they would give to him. 

Had it been otherwise, not they alone would have per- 
ished, but man also. For when we begin our being, it is 
as natural men, wholly unregenerate ; and if life did not 
flow into us through the unregenerate, it could not reach us 
nor be received by us, because it would not be a life that 
we could live by. But because an influence which is ac- 
commodated and adapted to us in that state reaches us, 
we live ; and because we live, better influences may also 
reach us, mingling with and tempering and disposing the 
evil, until its power of destruction is converted, if we will, 
into a means of salvation. Only through such instrumen- 
tality does the influent life from the Lord reach any ; for 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 145 

by this means is His life adapted to the receptivity of all, 
and thus are all bound together, however unconsciously or 
involuntarily, for good. By this means, Divine Provi- 
dence secures to us life ; and without that suppression 
of evil, which would be a suppression of life, not in the 
infernals only, but in us, he provides that even evil shall 
do his work. He overrules it, and brings forth good out 
of it, and compels -it to promote the progressive improve- 
ment of the individual and the race. We live ; we begin 
with living a merely natural life, which we have not chosen, 
but which springs from the qualities and tendencies we 
inherit. It may be that from some of these qualities and 
tendencies this life is outwardly good and kind before it 
is spiritually so ; then we do not know ourselves ; the evil 
is shut up, and not driven away. But no one is left in this 
ignorance but those who will not suffer it to be removed ; 
and with growing self-knowledge, the power is also given 
us of gradually substituting for our earlier states of thought 
and feeling, a spiritual life, a free and voluntary life, freely 
and voluntarily chosen, and made our own by this choice, 
by this act of adoption. And thus this power becomes the 
power of ascending from earth to heaven. 

In us, as we have often said, this work is always limited 
and imperfect. But just so far as we carry it forwards, just 
so far is our external man united with our internal. For 
just so far the vital influences which inspire good into our 
inmost being have triumphed ; they have succeeded in over- 
coming the resistance of our external, where lie our lusts, 
our selfish, worldly, or vicious propensities. These are sub- 
dued and removed ; and their place is now occupied by good 
affections, into which the internal and spiritual influences 
may flow without obstruction or restraint. Then the ex- 
ternal is conformed to the internal. When reason, or con- 
science, or religion, tells us one thing, we neither do, nor 
13 



146 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

desire to do, nor think of doing, another thing. Conflict has 
given way to harmony. The internal and external are 
conjoined in unity. Our eternal destiny depends upon the 
question, Shall our external nature triumph, and our inner 
life be subdued to a conformity with it, or shall this internal 
life conquer, rule, and fill the external ? 

A similar effect was produced, by similar causes and sim- 
ilar means, in our Lord's assumed humanity ; but perfectly 
and infinitely. His external was brought, by the absolute 
suppression of all its natural tendencies to sin, into a per- 
fect conformity and perfect union with the internal. And 
because this internal was Divine, the external became also, 
by this perfect conjunction and unity, perfectly and for ever 
Divine. It became the divine external of Jehovah. Hence, 
by it and through it, all Wisdom is manifested, all Love op- 
erates ; and therefore is it said, that to it " all power is given." 
And for ever and with all men is this almighty power ex- 
erted in bringing us to an exactly similar end, by exactly 
similar means, but in only that degree and measure which 
our own freedom and our own co-operation permit. 

The whole doctrine of the internal and the external man, 
as held by the New Church, is like so many other of its 
doctrines, not so much new, as newly expanded, developed, 
and defined. Something of it, as has been often said, must 
always have been known to every thinking being who 
sought his own reformation, and by this seeking became 
conscious that he had, as it were, two natures ; one lower 
and external, governed by sense, and in contact with the 
world; the other higher, internal, and striving to control and 
direct the other and make it better. So, too, must he have 
learnt from consciousness, that, exactly in proportion as 
these efforts of the internal were successful, and as the ex- 
ternal became thereby conformed to and conjoined in har- 
mony with the internal, he became good, peaceful, happy. 



THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 147 

And something of this doctrine has belonged to all religion 
and all religious philosophy. 

This doctrine is now a central doctrine of the New 
Church ; and it is defined and illustrated by truths which 
explain to us our nature, the elements of character, the ori- 
gin and the laws of life, and our relations with Him who 
is the perpetual Source of life. The same doctrine applies 
to and explains our Lord's life on earth, and the relation 
between his external nature ; derived from Mary, and his 
internal, which was Jehovah. These two were distinct, not 
as two persons are distinct, but in the same way as our ex- 
ternal is distinct from our internal, and yet in a far higher 
degree. 

To one who has learnt nothing of the difference between 
his own external and his internal, it must needs be idle to 
speak of our Lord's life on earth, or of the glorification of 
his assumed human nature ; for it is impossible that he 
should receive any idea on the subject. On the other hand, 
exactly in proportion as one advances in this knowledge of 
himself, and as he permits the work of regeneration to go 
on within him, he will become conscious of the distinction 
between his external and his internal, and of the natural 
opposition between them, and of that congruity, harmony, 
and conjunction of the two, which are the end, the effect, 
and the measure of regeneration. And exactly in that pro- 
portion will he have learnt experimentally the truths which 
explain the mystery of the Divine humanity. And then 
this mystery becomes indeed a truth, — the greatest of 
truths. 

When clouds overspread our sky, the diffused light tells 
us of the sun that is beyond them. And if the clouds grow 
thin, we may discern, not yet him, but his place ; and may 
see that thence cometh all that is not darkness. But in the 
heavens these clouds are swept away ; and there, as the Sun 



148 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 

of heaven, for ever pouring forth its heat and light, its love 
and wisdom, for ever shines the infinite and eternal Divine 
Humanity. 

If I have not wholly failed in exhibiting the analogy be- 
tween our Lord's life on earth and that which should be 
our earthly life ; if I have at all succeeded in showing what 
is meant by the command which requires us " to take up 
the cross and follow Him," — then it will be apparent that 
the great result was attained by means of infinite tempta- 
tion, infinite conflict, infinite sorrow, and, through this, infi- 
nite victory. It was thus that, by the path of sorrow, which 
we also must tread, He reached the goal towards which 
we also may go. And He will go with us through this 
weary road, as one who has travelled it before ; suffer as we 
may, He knows, not by his Divine omniscience only, but by 
his Divine-human experience, what that suffering is ; and 
it was thus that his humanity became Divine, and that this 
Divine Humanity became, and is, the sovereign Lord of 
Sorrow. 

Always, everywhere, for ever, sorrow obeys him. Al- 
ways it is his instrument and conforms to his laws, and does 
his work. And this work is salvation. It is the destruc- 
tion of sorrow by destroying the causes of sorrow ; it is the 
giving to man the Peace of God. 



THE SABBATH. 



13 



THE SABBATH. 



Because things which are common are not noticed, and 
the mercy of God makes most common the things we most 
need, his best and constant gifts affect us least. There are 
blessings so universal, so unfailing, so sure to come at their 
appointed season, that all wonder at them died long ago ; and 
with wonder passed away attention, observation, and interest. 
Poets have imagined the glad astonishment of the first man, 
as the young world was unveiled before him ; but who has 
thought that every morning awakes us from the counterfeit 
of death, and brings to us a new creation, a new revelation 
of existence, which would always inspire us with awe and 
admiration but for our dulled sense ? And when the morn- 
ing of the year smiles upon retreating Winter, and Earth 
awakes from her long sleep, how far we fall behind the due 
acknowledgment of the beauty and the joy of this re-birth 
of nature. How little we think of the daily sunshine, of 
the rain that comes to feed that vegetable world which 
gives us food ; how little of the air, of all the constant gifts 
of God that which is most instantly needful for life, and of 
all the most invisible. How very little of that one of these 
common and unthought-of blessings which forms our more 
immediate subject. 

The Sabbath ! Can there be anything in that worthy 



152 THE SABBATH. 

of earnest inquiry, of our profoundest thought? Every 
week is sure to bring it to us ; and not to us only, but to 
many hundred millions ; and not now only, but far back we 
see it, brightening the dark ages of Christianity, and, far 
again beyond them, it shines upon the hills of Palestine. 
In that dim East, where the first faint dawn of humanity 
arose, it was, and now, in nearly all the latitudes of the 
broad earth, — for to nearly all of them the cross has been 
borne, — it is. And this very commonness and antiquity of 
the Sabbath veils it from our regard. It is now one of the 
universal and established things ; and has taken its place as 
a matter of course ; and it occurs to very few indeed to ask 
anything about its origin, its authority, its meaning, or its 
purposes. 

Nevertheless, this very universality and antiquity would 
seem to entitle it to respect, if only on the ground of pre- 
scription. That it was universal and constant in the Jew- 
ish Church, every one knows. That it did not originate in 
the law of Moses, but, like many other provisions, was but 
re-enacted and enforced by that law, is believed on good 
evidence. That it was transplanted quite early into Chris- 
tianity, and has been always acknowledged in various ways 
by nearly all Christians, is as well known. And it is not 
reasonable to believe that a mere vanity could have had so 
much power and endurance. 

Moreover, the collateral testimonies in favor of the Sab- 
bath are not without some value. We cannot, it is true, 
refer to ancient heathen customs, or to passages in old 
writers alluding to these customs, for the purpose of finding 
there additional authority for the observance of the day. 
Yet investigations of this kind afford a certain measure of 
support to the belief that the Sabbath has, in itself, some in- 
trinsic worth and importance. 

Perhaps it may be admitted, that nothing looks so arbi- 



THE SABBATH. 153 

trary as the Sabbath. There is not, among the institutions 
which have prevailed long and extensively, any one which, 
at the first aspect, seems to rest so absolutely on the will of 
its Founder. There is His command ; and because of His 
command, there is the Sabbath; and for no other cause 
apparently does it exist among men. The seventh day ! 
Why the seventh more than any other day ? Does ex- 
perience show that precisely this amount of rest is that 
which is best adapted to laboring man and beast ? Or has 
physiology, or any other branch of science, discovered any- 
thing which comes in aid of experience, or makes us expect, 
a priori, that He who made man would require of him to 
abstain from labor every seventh day ? No. 

If the institution of the Sabbath be so arbitrary, it may 
seem strange that God should impose and reiterate this 
command with so much solemnity. And if we are satis- 
fied with the answer, that " the ways of God are past find- 
ing out," the question then comes up in another form : in 
its relation to man, of whom, and of whose springs of action 
and manner of acting, we know more. For if the Jewish 
observance of the Sabbath be sufficiently accounted for by 
the distinctness of the command, and the positive law given 
to them with the dread sanctions of Sinai, how can we ac- 
count for the general observance of the same institution 
by Christians of every age ? If it be purely arbitrary, 
one would suppose that only a positive requirement could 
establish or preserve it ; and where is that to be found in 
Christianity ? 

The residue of the ritual law of the Jews is abrogated. 
The Sabbath itself, so far as it rests upon that law, would 
seem to be an observance of the last day of the week. 
Where was the authority which changed it to the first day ? 
Where any better authority, than that which every man 
has to change it again to the second, or third, or fourth, as 



154 THE SABBATH. 

may suit him best ? There is no certain evidence that it 
was generally observed by Christians of the earliest ages ; 
and what evidence there is on this subject is mainly con- 
fined to the Jewish Christians. And the references to the 
Sabbath in the Gospels, if not opposed to the strict and 
literal Jewish observance of it, certainly contain nothing 
like a re-enactment or confirmation. Why, then, has this 
day been held as in some way sacred so long, and by so 
many varying sects and classes ? 

There is yet another circumstance of no great apparent 
magnitude, but adding to the singularity of the Sabbath, if 
it be only arbitrary ; and this is, its place in the law of 
Moses. It is a ceremony, a rite ; and upon its face it is 
nothing else. Now, there is a long and exceedingly minute 
ritual law delivered to the Jews ; but the institution of the 
Sabbath is not there. Another more especial, more im- 
portant code was revealed through Moses. This is very 
brief; it seems almost to be the concentrated essence of 
God's will ; and twice was it written upon stone tables for 
man to read. Its precepts and requirements are very sim- 
ple. It rebukes idolatry and profanation; requires honor 
to parents ; forbids murder, adultery, theft, falsehood, and 
covetousness. These provisions the universal law of human 
life asserts as the primal and elementary principles of all 
good conduct. But connected with these is the command 
to keep holy the Sabbath-day ; and thus strangely mingles 
this arbitrary, this inexplicable thing, with the simple re- 
quirements which have the sanction of common sense, of 
experience, and (with the exception of idolatry) of all the 
systems of law or of religion which God has given to man 
or permitted man to make for himself. For only when 
any religion has become corrupted, and is near its death, 
have the moral precepts comprised in the ten command- 
ments been renounced or lost. 



THE SABBATH. 155 

Considerations of this kind have always led some think- 
ing minds to believe that the Sabbath had probably a force 
and a significance of its own, however difficult it may be to 
detect and unveil them. And to those whose inquiries 
are turned in that direction, the ancient heathen references, 
however indistinct, have some interest. 

The division of time by weeks prevailed from the remot- 
est antiquity, very extensively. Distinct traces of it are 
found among the Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Arabians, 
and Persians ; and there are obscure intimations which are 
supposed to point to a consecrated Sabbath among many of 
these nations, and some others. In the early literature of 
Greece there are allusions to it which can hardly be con- 
sidered indistinct. Thus Hesiod says : 

"Again the seventh, the illustrious day." 
Elsewhere he speaks of 

" The seventh, the sacred day." 
Homer says : 

" It was the seventh day, and the whole was finished." 

And a line preserved among the fragments of the poet 
Linus says almost the same thing : 

" On the seventh day were all things finished." 

These heathen references to the Sabbath, or to what 
may have been a Sabbath, have not been wholly unnoticed 
by Christian inquirers. Some have said that they arose 
merely from the convenience of dividing time by a lunar 
period, and that this division would fall naturally into 
halves and quarters. Others have supposed that the hea- 
then observance was borrowed from the Jewish. There is 
no doubt that the ritual of Palestine, from its splendor, 
perhaps from its peculiarity, was widely known among sur- 
rounding nations. But although some traces of its influence 



156 THE SABBATH. 

are discernible, there is nothing to explain or render credi- 
ble the fact, that the Sabbath alone should have been se- 
lected and adopted into the practices or the poetry of other 
nations. Another hypothesis supposes, that, as the sacred- 
ness of the Sabbath is declared in the Scriptures to have 
existed from the beginning, so at the beginning some mani- 
festation of its holiness was made, which was borne along 
the stream of time, and cast here and there upon its shores. 
And thence we find uncertain and disconnected traces of 
it, among the different branches of the human family. In 
this supposition there is, if not truth, at least an approach 
towards the truth. 

Probably the prevailing opinion among the few who now 
ask the reason of the Sabbath is, that it was originally a 
good device, which has been perpetuated, accidentally as it 
were. The regular occurrence, after a brief interval, of a 
day of rest, is salutary to the body and to the mind ; and, as 
it brings with it worship and religious acknowledgment and 
instruction, it is good for the soul. Therefore thoughtful 
people, seeing its utility, have defended and preserved it ; 
and the many, following blindly, have accepted the day, and 
regarded themselves as bound in some manner to the ob- 
servance of it by God's law. 

There may be those, however, who think that a deeper 
significance is indicated by the recorded deeds and words of 
God concerning the Sabbath ; and who demand a deeper 
reason for a fact of so much power, of so long endurance, 
of such wide dominion. And such persons may be inter- 
ested in the explanation of the subject given by the sci- 
ence of correspondence and the religious doctrines of the 
New Jerusalem. 



THE SABBATH. 157 

The Sabbath, as originally instituted by the law of 
Moses, is the seventh day. 

They who have but little knowledge of the science of 
correspondence may be startled at hearing that this science 
extends even to numbers. For if there is anything alone, 
anything perfectly independent, isolated, abstract, and, in its 
state of abstraction, powerless, it would seem to be numbers. 
Yet there are some considerations which might serve to 
check this belief. Certainly it was not held always. In 
the beginning of philosophy, or in what we call its begin- 
ning, because the recollection of history goes not beyond it, 
such men as Pythagoras and Plato thought differently ; not 
to mention a large class of philosophers, who, however 
widely they may have wandered in their speculations, are 
not to be lightly regarded, except by those who are very 
ignorant of the history of the human mind. 

" Number," said Pythagoras, " is the ruler of forms and 
ideas." 

"To the creating Deity, number was the most unde- 
viating balance of the composition and generation of all 
things." 

Philolaus said, " Number was the judicial instrument 
(the means and standard of judgment and arrangement) of 
the Maker of the universe." 

I have not gone to the originals for these, but have taken 
them, almost at hazard, from among the many similar pas- 
sages which may be found in the common books which 
treat of the history of philosophy. They only prove, what 
indeed every one admits, that there was a prevailing dis- 
position to ascribe to numbers significance, power, and im- 
portance. But the system, if system there was, on which 
this was done, cannot be well explained by any remains of 
antiquity which have come down to us. 

All of this has been usually thought a dream, a mere 
14 



158 THE SABBATH. 

phantasm. And in an age which knows so much as the 
present, and knows so little of the limits of its knowledge, 
it seems to be thought so more certainly than ever. The 
fruitless — if not foolish — endeavors made at different 
times in past ages to revive this study of numbers, and draw 
from it some definite results, have doubtless confirmed this 
belief. Just the same opinion is held, however, of many 
other elements of the Pythagorean or Platonic philosophy ; 
of some of them, with probable justice ; of all of them, per- 
haps, with some justice. But in that philosophy there was 
nevertheless too much of strong and penetrating thought, 
too many indications of a wide view, and of a just insight 
into the nature of things, to permit a reasonable man to 
say contentedly that Pythagoras and Plato were silly, or 
even to say the same thing in the less plain but equivalent 
language, which speaks of unchecked fancy, predominating 
imagination, dreams of the childhood of thought, and so on. 
Moreover, if one has looked much into the origin and his- 
tory of science and the relations of the present to the past, 
he sees much that modern science is but rescuing and re- 
covering from forgetfulness. Altogether, it requires some 
courage, or much ignorance, to say that everything of an- 
cient belief, which is not clear to us, must in itself be ab- 
surd. Many sensible persons, possibly a majority of them, 
might be of opinion that our knowledge is not so universal, 
or so complete, as to justify this sweeping conclusion. 

One who believed the doctrines of the New Church, and 
was accustomed to think with their help, would probably 
regard the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers as held some- 
what indistinctly by the philosophers of that school ; and as 
certainly made much more indistinct by the lapse of time, 
and by the obstructing mediums through which it has 
reached our day. If it be difficult for the most skilful and 
careful to report accurately peculiar views of abstract sub- 



THE SABBATH. 159 

jects, the difficulty is much greater, when, instead of skill, 
there is an ignorance, gradually, as time passes, deepening 
into midnight ; and instead of care, indifference or con- 
tempt. But he would probably believe that in this doc- 
trine of numbers, mutilated, misinterpreted, and misrepre- 
sented as it is, we have the remains of one department of 
an earlier and completer science. 

It is an exceedingly common remark, and it is growing 
more common every day, that modern science seems to be, 
in good measure, a revival of old knowledge ; not so much 
a creation, as an awakening from long slumber. There 
are many things found in Egypt, preserved in monumental 
paintings and sculptures, curiously connecting together the 
remotest antiquity and the immediate present. 

The re-discovery by Copernicus of the Pythagorean sys- 
tem of astronomy is an instructive instance of old science 
becoming new again. We have no exact and entirely 
trustworthy statement of the system of the universe which 
Pythagoras taught. The traditions on which we must rely 
are somewhat inconsistent, and all contain some error. But 
they contained also sufficient evidence to cause the name of 
" Pythagorean " to be applied at first as freely as that of 
" Copernican " to the system of astronomy which is now 
universally adopted. And there is abundant reason for 
believing that Pythagoras understood and taught, with 
a good measure of accuracy, the constitution of the uni- 
verse. There are indications that this work of re-discovery 
is extending itself in other directions ; and that something 
like it is impending over the scientific world in relation to 
numbers. 

While writing these pages, I have fallen in with an arti- 
cle in the thirty-fifth number of the " British and Foreign 
Medical Review," which contains the following paragraph. 
It is also quoted with much approbation in " The Princi- 



160 THE SABBATH. 

pies of Beauty in Coloring Systematized"; which is one 
of a series of works by D. R. Hay, on the mathematics of 
beauty in color, that have attracted much attention in Eng- 
land. 

"There is harmony of numbers in all nature; in the 
force of gravity ; in the planetary movements ; in the laws 
of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity ; in the forms 
of animals and plants ; in the perceptions of the mind. The 
direction indeed of modern natural and physical science is 
toward a generalization which shall express the fundamen- 
tal laws of all by one simple numerical ratio. "We think 
modern science will soon show that the mysticism of Py- 
thagoras was mystical only to the unlettered, and that it 
was a system of philosophy founded on the then existing 
mathematics, which latter seem to have comprised more of 
the philosophy of numbers than our present science." 

The ascertained fact must not be forgotten,' that the an- 
cient philosophers taught a twofold doctrine. One private, 
and known only to the initiated and the trusted ; the other 
public, and given to the whole world. All their reasons for 
this are not known to us. The death of Socrates may in- 
dicate that prudence suggested some of them. But the fact 
is certain ; and another fact connected with this is probable. 
It is, that an air of mystery, of sacredness, was purposely 
thrown over much that came forth into the common ear ; 
perhaps from the lingering influence of an early monopoly 
of knowledge by the priesthood ; perhaps to protect it from a 
too rigid scrutiny, or to obtain for it more of respect or ac- 
ceptance ; perhaps from a strong feeling (if an obscure view) 
of the universal symbolism of nature and the profound re- 
lations between external truths and those which ought to 
reach the heart and govern the life. If we could eliminate 
the difficulties which, springing from these sources, attach 
to what Pythagoras says of the sacred quaternion, and to 



THE SABBATH. 161 

other similar expressions about numbers, we might perhaps 
find there something which it would be well to know. 
There can be no doubt that he ascribed power and worth, 
not to numbers in the abstract, but rather to numerical re- 
lations and proportions. That he included form, and the 
science of geometry, is made probable, not only by sayings 
of his own which have reached us, but by the declaration 
of Plato, that " God geometrizes." In other words, we 
have reason to believe that one important portion of what 
he meant by his doctrine of numbers is included in the 
simpler propositions, that qualities and forces spring from 
Form — internal or external, — and that Form is deter- 
mined, not so much by original difference in primal ele- 
ments, as by the numerical and geometrical relations and 
arrangements of these elements. 

Very rapidly is modern science tending to bring all force 
and all distinctive quality within the grasp of geometry and 
number. Perhaps there are no better instances of this 
than those afforded by chemistry ; and these may be the 
more striking from the fact, that this is the last science in 
which we should have expected to find them, and the last- 
in which, a few years ago, we could have found them. 

To the reader who is at all acquainted with this science, 
it is enough to suggest the law of definite proportions and 
multiples, the newer doctrine of isomorphism, the yet in- 
complete analogies which connect the specific gravity of 
bodies with their specific heat, and the hints which are 
now pointing out the forms of the primitive crystals of 
bodies as affording a possible basis for their true classifica- 
tion. To one quite ignorant of chemistry, some illustrations 
of a part of our meaning may have some interest ; and as 
the best that occurs to us, we would speak of the air, — the 
air we breathe. 

This is compounded of two elements. Neither of these, 
14* 



162 THE SABBATH. 

it is believed, has yet been reduced to its simplest form, and 
both, therefore, may perhaps be compound bodies. But, 
passing by this question, we look at them as simple ele- 
ments. Their common names in modern books are oxy- 
gen and nitrogen; the nitrogen dilutes the oxygen, and 
what other part it plays we do not yet know. In the pres- 
ent state of the science, the air we breathe may be re- 
garded as a mixture containing one fifth of oxygen and 
four fifths of nitrogen. 

But these two elements of air may be made to com- 
bine chemically in five different proportions ; not merely to 
mix in these five proportions, but to unite or combine 
closely together in precisely these proportions, and form 
five very different substances. 

If there be, by volume, just one half as much of oxygen 
as of nitrogen, nitrous oxide is formed. This is the well- 
known laughing gas, recently used as one of the means of 
extinguishing sensibility during surgical operations or at- 
tacks of pain. 

If there be just the same volume of each, then nitrous 
gas is formed. This is a very poisonous, suffocating air or 
gas. 

If there be a volume and a half of oxygen to one volume 
of nitrogen, then hyponitrous acid will be formed, This, 
under certain circumstances, is a green liquid, excessively 
volatile, and poisonous. 

If there are just two volumes of oxygen to one of nitro- 
gen, then nitrous acid is formed. This also is a liquid; 
acid, pungent, powerfully corrosive, and extremely volatile ; 
and its vapor is quite irrespirable, exciting great irritation 
and spasm of the windpipe, even when much diluted with 
air. 

But let there be precisely two and a half volumes of oxy- 
gen to one of nitrogen, and then nitric acid, or, as it is popu- 



THE SABBATH. 163 

larly called, aquafortis, (which is not only a deadly poison, 
but a corrosive acid that burns up the flesh at once, and 
whose power veiy few metals can resist,) is formed out of 
this new combination of the elements of the air we breathe. 
Air, then, is the same as aquafortis, — excepting in the pro- 
portions of its constituents. 

The exact numerical proportion of these elements is also 
preserved in the five substances, if they are measured by 
weight instead of volume. Thus, if the nitrogen in all of 
them is a constant quantity, weighing in all 14.15, then the 
oxygen will weigh in the first precisely 8 ; in the second, 
twice 8, or 16 ; in the third, three times 8, or 24 ; in the 
fourth, four times 8, or 32 ; and in the fifth, five times 8, 
or 40. And these weights and multiples of weight are 
in each case perfectly exact. 

Such facts as these are not isolated ; there are many 
of them, or rather, as we should say, there is little else in 
chemistry but such facts. Hence a modern work on this 
science — one of Liebig's, for instance, now widely dif- 
fused — may be opened almost at random, and found to 
present an aspect hardly to .be distinguished from that of a 
work on geometry. Formerly a book on chemistry related 
experiments, and drew inferences, and constructed theories 
by general reasoning. There is and will continue to be 
much of this ; but connected with it is now an immense 
mass of rigorous calculation. The whole science, its analy- 
sis, its theories, its conjectures, and its hopes, all seem to 
rest upon numerical relations and proportions. 

Other sciences offer their testimony to the same result ; 
and we must be deaf or incredulous if we are not prepared 
to admit, that the knowledge of the intimate nature of things 
is giving every day new reasons for ascribing qualities, func- 
tions, and forces, — we do not say to numbers, for that 
might seem and might be too abstract, — but to the effect 



164 



THE SABBATH. 



and power of the relations, proportions, and products of 
which numbers are the exponents. 



When, from views of this kind, we pass to the assertion 
that numbers have also a correspondence and analogy which 
invests them in the Word with a moral and spiritual sig- 
nificance, we seem to bring together things perfectly dis- 
tinct; — to leap across a chasm. But when anything is 
known of the correspondence between the things within and 
above man, and the things without and below him, the chasm 
becomes, if not closed, at least bridged. For we then learn 
that the spirit- world is the cause of this lower world ; or 
the medium through which the First Cause operates to 
produce this lower world ; and this medium impresses itself 
upon, or, as it were, repeats itself in, that which is produced 
by it and through it. 

Whatever exists in the material universe, if shut off 
from all connection with the spiritual world, would cease at 
once to exist. For material things exist only as spiritual 
things extend their action down to and upon this lower plane 
of being, and there give birth to phenomena which are 
their representatives, and in which we may trace the linea- 
ments of the originals; somewhat as we read upon this 
printed page, not only the forms of the types which im- 
pressed the words there, but within these the thoughts of 
which they are the exponents. 

We hope no reader will do himself the wrong of believ- 
ing us so weak as to suppose that an assertion of this kind 
can now be generally received. For this would be to be- 
lieve us ignorant of the one great barrier to the reception 
of the fact and the law of correspondence. This barrier is 



THE SABBATH. 165 

the prevailing total ignorance and disbelief of any spiritual 
world whatever. The time has gone by when many men 
were willing to proclaim this unbelief; and most persons 
now conceal it from their neighbors and from themselves. 
It is easy to do this ; there are words enough which offer 
themselves to this work of deception. And, by the proper 
use of them, we may hide from our own minds the fact 
that there is not in our minds one clear thought, one atom 
of real belief, of any spiritual world whatever. If any 
one who supposes that he believes in spiritual existence 
asks himself, How, in what form or manner, do spirits live ? 
in most cases but one honest answer returns from the re- 
cesses of their inmost thoughts ; it is, In no form or man- 
ner whatsoever. 

There is a kind of belief which does not imply nor re- 
quire any conception of its object. We may believe that a 
book is true, without understanding a word of its contents. 
But then we believe the man or other testimony that tells 
us the book is true, and in no just sense can we be said to 
believe the book. But even this belief is something, and 
may be useful. So we may believe, on the authority of ed- 
ucation, or of our instructors or our companions, that there 
is another world, without any conception whatever of any 
person or thing or mode of existence there. Then we be- 
lieve that which so informs us ; but we have hardly a belief 
of another world, for we form no idea of its contents. Yet 
this belief is something, and may be useful. And it often 
happens that sickness, misfortune, the death of those we 
love, or whatever else brings desolation to the mind, brings 
also light ; it cleanses the eye of thought ; and hope, and 
earnest wishes, help belief; and we forget the falsities which 
cause the darkness, and for a time believe that they who 
have passed away before us are there, living persons, and 
we image them in the life they have, as we knew them in 
the life they have left. 



166 THE SABBATH. 

Again the light passes away ; it was but the brief and 
broken radiance of an Arctic morning when winter is very- 
near, — a moment of imperfect day between long and 
dreary nights. Then darkness resumes its sway, and be- 
lief shrinks into its narrowest limits, and reason congratu- 
lates itself that the delusive imagination has passed away. 

When a friend leaves us for England, we follow him in 
imagination and with belief. If accident casts him into the 
midst of China, or somewhere else where we have no distinct 
knowledge of the accessories of life, we do not lose our con- 
ception of his person, of the earth on which he treads, or of 
the heaven which still bends over him. Upon these con- 
ceptions rests a distinct belief of his existence. But let us 
hear of his death, and he has gone at once where few minds 
follow him. He has become nothing, and has passed into a 
world of nothingness. 

This is not true, however, with all minds. There are 
those whose Faith has never heard the false logic of unbe- 
lief, or has heard and defied the fiend. They believe that 
he who was a man in this world is still a man in that world. 
And then they must believe, and are willing to believe, that 
he needs a world, or the means of being and of action, there. 
And they are willing at least to hear a system, which upon 
this world of nature builds a fabric of belief of which every 
stone is fitted to every other and to its own place. 

It is to such minds that we would speak. We ask of 
them, whether, if this correspondence may be true in gen- 
eral, it may not also be true in all particulars ; and whether, 
if it be true of substances and forms, it must not be true of 
the laws which govern and define them, and especially of 
that science of numbers which measures, defines, and de- 
clares the relations, the functions, and the mutual action of 
all substances and all forces. 

Upon this point, a New Church man would be apt to in- 



THE SABBATH. 167 

quire of Swedenborg. He would find much said on this 
subject; not much, however, of detail, or rather not much 
of theory. And if the principles of his philosophy would 
enable us to push these results somewhat farther, it is bet- 
ter now, and in this connection, that we should confine our- 
selves to a very general view of the significance of some 
of the numbers most frequent in the Scriptures. 

Let us select for this purpose three, twelve, forty, and 
seven. 

It will be found that each of these numbers is used in a 
peculiar way, and apparently with a peculiar sense. This 
fact has often been noticed ; and the prevailing uniformity 
of the application and use of these numbers in the Bible 
has been generally ascribed to a prevailing superstition on 
the subject in the minds of the authors ; a supposition which 
is unwelcome in the exact degree in which God is sup- 
posed to be the author of His own Word. 

These four numbers were selected because they have 
this in common, — that each of them represents a whole, 
or all ; but in different ways or under different aspects. 

Three denotes that whole which consists of the three es- 
sential elements of every unity ; as, love, wisdom, power ; 
affection, thought, act ; cause, means, effect ; beginning, mid- 
dle, end ; soul, body, action. Every whole which exists, or 
which can exist, has in it this Trinity ; and the many dif- 
ferent aspects under which it presents itself are closely re- 
lated. For love, affection, cause, beginning, soul, the first 
terms of the series, are connected together by an obvious 
analogy ; so are the second terms of the series, — wisdom, 
thought, means, middle, body ; and so again are the third 
terms, — power, act, effect, end, action. And this Trinity, 
or Triunity, is, when applied in the highest sense to the God- 
head, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; or, to say the same 
thing in other words, Divine Love, Divine Wisdom, and 



168 THE SABBATH. 

Divine Power or Operation ; which three constitute one 
Divine Person, as human love and human wisdom and 
human power or operation constitute one human person. 
Thus, this number is first used in the second verse of the 
eighteenth chapter of Genesis, where the three men stood 
before Abraham, to announce to him the future birth of 
Isaac. In the conversation which ensued, Abraham ad- 
dressed them as " My Lord " ; and when they addressed 
him or Sarah, it is sometimes said " they " spake, but more 
often, " And the Lord said." 

But it is obviously impossible to examine all the passages 
in which the four selected numbers are mentioned. Any 
person, with the help of a concordance, may verify for 
himself the manner in which they are used. We find that 
we must here speak of them very concisely. 

Twelve denotes a whole, not as compounded of its essen- 
tial and indivisible elements, but of its several parts or mem- 
bers. As the twelve tribes composing the Jewish nation, 
and afterwards the twelve Apostles, — both representing a 
church. This number is often so used ; and sometimes, as 
in the Apocalypse, large multiples of it are employed to 
give force and emphasis to the meaning. As in the seventh 
chapter it is said that one hundred and forty and four thou- 
sand were sealed in their foreheads. 

Forty denotes a completed preparation or purification by 
means of temptations, conflicts, sufferings. Thus, the forty 
days of the deluge ; the forty years of the wanderings of 
the children of Israel in the desert; the forty days that 
Moses passed in the mount, eating and drinking nothing ; 
the forty days of the temptations of our Lord, — all have 
this meaning. So, too, it was ordered, in the first three 
verses of the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, that, " if 
the wicked man be worthy to be beaten," or in a condition 
to make punishment useful to him, "the judge shall cause 



THE SABBATH. 169 

him to lie down," or the truth which judges him shall cause 
him to humble himself, and " forty stripes he may give him, 
and not exceed " ; for the punishment, or painful conse- 
quences of evil, whether they occur within or without, should 
not exceed the completeness indicated by this number, be- 
cause the punishments permitted by Divine Providence do 
not exceed that measure which is best fitted to produce 
— if it be possible — repentance and reformation. 

Seven, the number more immediately connected with our 
present subject, denotes a completed, entire holiness. What 
holiness, and particularly the holiness of the Sabbath, is, 
we shall consider more fully hereafter. At present it is 
enough to say, that everything is holy just as far as it is 
from God alone, and unholy as far as it is from man with- 
out God. Hence the number is applied emphatically to 
the Sabbath. It would be inappropriate now to go over all 
the many instances in which the number is so used ; but it 
may be well to remark, that, as all evil is perverted good, 
all falsehood perverted truth, and all hell is heaven, in the 
language of Scripture, " upside down," so all the words of 
Scripture denote not only their primary meanings, but some- 
times, where evil is spoken of, their exact opposites. Thus 
in Luke, in the second verse of the eighth chapter, " seven 
devils" were said to be cast out from Mary Magdalene. 
So, when John in the Apocalyptic vision, which revealed to 
him the future state of the Christian Church and the com- 
ing of the New Jerusalem, saw a book written within and 
without, which no one in heaven, nor on earth, nor under 
the earth, was able to open or to look upon, — this book 
denotes the Book of God, with its internal sense written 
within and its external sense written without, sealed, or 
wholly closed from view, by the unholinesses and impurities 
which have filled the Church with darkness and falsity, 
and which blind our eyes and disturb our vision. These 
15 



170 THE SABBATH. 

seals are said to be " seven " ; for they are complete and en- 
tire, and do entirely veil the Scriptures, and their spiritual 
sense is wholly unknown and their external sense imperfect 
ly understood. It is said that John wept much because the 
book could not be opened. This denotes the profound con- 
viction of such as John, that the Bible is a sealed book, of 
which the treasures are at once inestimable and inaccessi- 
ble ; a conviction which has never failed in the Christian 
Church, and in its earlier ages produced earnest and not 
wholly ineffectual endeavors to penetrate the clouds. And 
when one of the elders who were near the throne said to 
John, " Weep not ; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah 
hath prevailed to open the book and to loosen the seals 
thereof," — by this is indicated both the comfort which they 
who have so wept have found in the hope of a brighter fu- 
ture, and the promise that this future should come, and the 
prophecy of that which is now present with men ; present, 
but how little known, how little regarded. 

In 1620 a band of pilgrims were preparing to seek the 
wilderness which an ocean separated from their pleasant 
homes. They were under the pastoral care of the venera- 
ble John Robinson ; and in his last address " to his people," 
says one of them in his Journal, " he charged us, before 
God and his holy angels, to follow him no farther than he 
followed Christ. And if God should reveal anything to us 
by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it 
as ever we were to receive any truth by his ministry. For 
he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light 
yet to break forth out of his Holy Word." This was his 
parting gift ; and the words went with them like a blessing. 
Did they not add somewhat to their strength and to their 
hope, as, amid suffering and danger, and in the constant 
sight of death, they toiled to lay the deep and strong founda- 
tions upon which we have builded ? Well were these words 



THE SABBATH. 171 

remembered ; often are they quoted ; and who shall say how 
much they have done to keep men's hearts from closing 
against the light ? how much to prepare a reception and a 
welcome, not wholly without its manifestation, for " the light 
and truth " now " breaking forth out of His holy Word " ? 



Let us recur to the Sabbath, as a consecration of every 
seventh day, once commanded by the positive law of God. 

It is quite important that we acquire, early in this inves- 
tigation, a definite understanding of what the laws of God 
are, and must necessarily be. We lay a good foundation 
for this, when we establish in our minds the important 
principle, that every law of God may also be regarded as a 
truth and as a promise. It is a truth, which wears the 
aspect of a law and becomes a law, when it is opposed ; or 
when there is difficulty and conflict between it and some- 
thing which does not conform to it. It is a truth, which 
comes from the source of all order, and comes to bring into 
order everything which it reaches. And where it finds 
any of these things in a state which is the opposite of that 
which the truth requires, then does it put on the appear- 
ance of compulsion ; it bears the face and name, assumes 
the dominion, and exerts the force, of law. 

But it is truth primarily. Law is well defined to be a rule 
of conduct to which conformity is required on certain condi- 
tions and by certain sanctions. But a law of God, consid- 
ered as a rule of conduct, must be necessarily a rule of good 
conduct; of perfectly good conduct. It must be a truth 
describing perfectly good conduct. It must be a truth which 
is itself an expression of perfect order. It is His truth, it 
exists in himself as the form, the intellectual expression, 



172 THE SABBATH. 

of something of his Divine life ; it comes forth to man to 
make the life of God more receivable by man ; and it pro- 
duces this effect by bringing man's life into better con- 
formity with the Divine life. It is the expression of some- 
thing of Divine order ; and it is expressed or given forth, 
that the same order may become human ; may be estab- 
lished in the life of man. Thus it is said, that after the 
labors of God, He rests. What meaning should be given 
to these words will be more apparent presently ; but it is 
an eternal fact, belonging to his Divine nature, that after 
these labors, He rests ; and this fact is revealed, and it puts 
on the shape of a compulsory law, to the end that, after 
man has finished his labors, he too may rest. 

Something is gained, for we are in an ascending path, 
when we rise above the contemplation of such a precept as 
mere law, and can see it as a truth ; can see that it is law only 
because it is truth in the first place ; and can see that it is 
therefore only the expression of order, inasmuch as order is 
only truth actualized, and truth is but the name, the form, 
the description, of order. 

But we do much more, and we place ourselves upon a 
much higher ground, when we read the law of God only 
as his promise. Every law which comes forth from his 
wisdom is the promise of a good which his love will give. 
Yes, let the wearied one, worn with the toil of a painful pro- 
gress, sick with the woe of those clinging hinderances, those 
strong and downward tendencies, which make the days of 
all his years days of labor and unrest, — let him be glad 
when the stern command smiles, and, with a voice as tender 
as the love that it proclaims, promises, that to him also a 
day of rest shall come ; that it will be the day of God, and 
holy and full of peace. 

The law of the Sabbath, be it law, or truth, or promise, 
is not merely general, but most specific. In connection 



THE SABBATH. 173 

with its collateral and illustrative texts, as those descriptive 
of the six preceding days, and other similar passages, it 
may tell us, at least it is intended to tell us, what that peace 
shall be which is represented by the Sabbath ; and how it 
shall descend and abide with man ; and when, by what 
means, and upon what conditions, it will thus bring down 
heaven to earth. Let us ascertain precisely what this state- 
ment is, in the literal sense. Happily, the words in which it 
is expressed present few difficulties and involve few ques- 
tions. We learn from these passages, — 

That God creates man and the earth upon which man 
dwells. 

That he employs in this creation six days, each of which 
has its appropriate work ; and they are progressive in a 
series. 

That the works of these days are the works of God. 

That after they are performed, he rests from his labors 
on the following day. 

That this day of rest is a holy day, because he so rests 
therein. 

And that, because of the intrinsic holiness of this day, he 
commands men to keep it holy, and to rest in it, abstaining 
from all labor during all the day. 

Now the question we would consider, and answer if we 
can, is, What does all this mean ? 

But this question very obviously divides itself into many. 
They may perhaps be stated thus : — 

"What is the man and what is the world which God so 
creates ? 

What is meant by his creation of the man and of the 
world, and in what manner is this creation performed ? 

What are the labors of God, and why are these works of 
Him " who fainteth not, neither is weary," represented as 
labors, requiring rest ? 
15* 



174 THE SABBATH. 

When, by what means, in what result, do these labors 
terminate, or cease to be labors ? 

What is meant by God's resting from his works ? 

What is it which makes the day of his rest holy ? 

Why is it commanded that man also should keep this 
day of rest holy ; and what does this command signify and 
require ? 

Let us begin at the beginning, and consider the ques- 
tion what man and what world were thus created by God. 
Was it the first man who lived upon this planet? was it 
the world which enwrapt the infancy of humanity ? If 
so, the Sabbath is indeed but the commemoration of a past 
fact. But not so can it be regarded by those who believe 
in the spiritual sense of Scripture. For this sense regards 
only the spirit and that which is of the spirit ; and there- 
fore it knows nothing of time, and all its past and all its 
future are included in one perpetual present. Then do we 
understand, that by the creation of man is meant his spirit- 
ual creation ; or the creation of a new spirit within him ; or 
his regeneration. What, then, is the world which is also 
created with man ? This also is of the spirit. 

For man is internal, and he is external. Or rather, he 
has an internal nature and an external nature. By his in- 
ternal nature are meant the springs of his life and conduct ; 
his interior and ruling l<we ; those deeply seated thoughts 
which hypocrisy does not bring out and transform into the 
fit instruments of its miserable work, and which do not 
lie in the hand to be passed from one to another like cur- 
rent coin ; affections, thoughts, opinions, belief, which form 
the foundation of the character, and are too firmly fixed to 
bend and change with the fluctuations of each day. This 
love, these thoughts, belong to the true spirit of man, and 
are meant by man ; but the world about him signifies the 



THE SABBATH. 175 

world of outer life, of outer feelings and thoughts, — the 
world which surrounds the spirit and sometimes disguises it, 
— and is always the medium by which it displays itself and 
acts and meets with other men, and always the earth upon 
which it rests and walks and lives and labors. This inter- 
nal and external man are represented, not only by man and 
the earth, but by the heavens and the earth ; and this not 
only in the first chapters of Genesis, but in other places, 
as we shall hereafter have occasion to show. 

This creation was not, but is ; it is constant and perpet- 
ual, not merely because of the perpetual succession of the 
generations of men, but because it is an ever-present work 
with every man. No matter how much, or how effectually, 
it is resisted, — there it stands, the centre of God's provi- 
dence with every individual upon earth, and the end which 
the Infinite has ever in view. We may approach it, or re- 
cede from it ; for we may work with God, or against him. 
If we will, he permits us to recede, for otherwise we should 
lose that freedom, which, being lost, we cease to be men. 
Therefore he permits his own work to fail, where it encoun- 
ters our wilful and unyielding choice of evil. Yet there 
this creation of a new spirit stands within us, stands for 
ever. In a portion of mankind it is not fully accomplished ; 
and yet the Divine endeavor to prevent their falling far- 
ther away from this end than they must, because they will, 
never ceases. And in those who permit this work to be 
done in them, it is always a morning which never passes 
into perfect day, only because through revolving eternities 
the work is ever being done, ever growing, ever advancing. 
Touched by the light of this truth, the story of creation 
comes forth from the slumber of the past, into the full glow 
of present life. It is no longer a dead fact, buried beneath 
the measureless ages which time has heaped above it ; to 
be protected by a failing reverence from the assaults of 



176 THE SABBATH. 

science ; to be listened to as its feeble voice penetrates the 
vast distance which separates between our present now and 
that old beginning. It stands at once before us and within 
us ; living with all the life we have ; radiant with the light 
of all the truth that we possess, and reflecting this light 
upon all the forward paths that open before us. 

How is this spiritual creation effected ? 

The answer to this question, as it is given in the letter 
of Scripture, is very specific. It extends through six days, 
and the work of each is particularized, and distinctly, almost 
minutely, described. But we are told by Swedenborg, that 
the first chapters of Genesis, as far as about the close of the 
eleventh chapter, are not historically true. They have 
only that truth which belongs to them by virtue of the law 
of correspondence ; for they are written in exact conformity 
with the principles of that science of correspondence which 
connects together the things of the world within us and 
those of the world without us. Little do we lose by this. 
It leaves us without a supposed knowledge of the manner 
in which the earth we tread, and the animals upon its sur- 
face, and the greater and the lesser lights of the sky, and our 
own fathers, were first made. It takes from us a relation 
of these facts upon which the advancing knowledge and the 
unsparing logic of these days were doing a fearful work. 
It takes away a feeble foundation upon which a trembling 
structure was reposing. For all this it substitutes a truth, 
which gathers to itself support from all other truth, and 
fears no progress, and asks no veil, and, instead of pray- 
ing to be let alone, as if, half expiring, it would perish at a 
touch, it stands erect, asking to be seen, to be examined, to 
be handled, to be used. 

It was said, that the first chapters of Genesis, to near the 
mention of Abraham, are not historically true. This Swe- 
denborg said one hundred years ago. And recent learning 



THE SABBATH. 177 

and criticism have perhaps established as a fact that is uni- 
versally admitted, that the earliest parts of Genesis differ 
from the rest of the Pentateuch so much in dialect, as to in- 
dicate, in connection with other reasons, that they have not 
the same origin. They are supposed to consist of several 
independent parts brought together by Moses. We suppose 
that they were taken from earlier Scriptures, that related 
only moral and spiritual truths, which were written in con- 
formity with the laws of correspondence ; and that passages 
were selected which in this way described the creation of 
a new world in man, because they formed, in their literal 
sense, an appropriate preface to the history of the Jews 
and their ancestry. But it was also said, that they have 
whatever literal truth belongs to them by virtue of this 
correspondence. If the things within man and the things 
without him, if these two worlds, do in fact correspond, the 
history of the one must in some general way be the history 
of the other. Hence the effort to save that beginning of 
the Bible from the assaults of science has had a certain 
success. One of these theories supposes that there were 
six periods of creation, but that the days were geological 
periods of vast extent ; and an imperfect reconciliation of 
these supposed enemies is in this way effected. Another 
view, which resembles the other, but on the whole is more 
successful, regards time less ; but, beginning with a nebula or 
little cloud of light, such as the telescope shows us scattered 
over the sky, supposes one of them to have been the parent 
of our solar and planetary system, and that it came into its 
present condition through six states which are described in 
Genesis. A third, more recent, but which meets with much 
acceptance, looks neither at time nor space, but considers 
the historian simply as declaring God to be the Universal 
Father, and describing his work of creation as divided into 
the six classes which would naturally occur in this order 
to a mind seeking to express this truth. 



178 THE SABBATH. 

All these theories have their interest, their value, and their 
truth. But none of them are completely true, and none of 
them give any worth or significance to the details of their 
creation. For this we must resort to the supposition, that 
it is written according to strict and scientific laws, which 
have caused it to waste no word, but to contain truth, and 
only truth, even to the most minute particulars. The Bible 
has remained until of late unassailable by natural science, and 
now new spiritual science is given to men, which will more 
than protect it ; which will not only exhibit its exact truth- 
fulness, but exalt its claims to respect and reverence. 

There are six progressive stages of regeneration ; and 
the seventh is the result and consummation. The idea will 
be unwelcome to some minds, that God works so by rule 
and measure. They think that this degrades him, and 
lessens the dignity of the work of salvation. Man, say 
they, is not a tree, which must have its roots, and then its 
stem and its branches, by successive efforts, and then its 
leaves and its fruit, all in their appointed order and their 
slow succession. The breath of life is in his nostrils ; and 
when the Holy Spirit would heal and save him, at the will 
of God the work is done. So may some think ; but there 
are considerations which may check this thought. Man is 
not more the work of God than is the tree, or the earth 
and stars, or the universe. Everywhere we find a settled 
succession as the law of order, of growth, and of progress. 
Experience teaches those who listen to it, that changes in 
the spirit and in the character are also gradual. Why 
may not these changes — with infinite variations in individ- 
uals — be subject to general laws, or rather, fall under a 
general classification. Did not the Lord mean to teach us 
something like this, when he compared the kingdom of God 
to the growth of "seed cast into the ground"; — "first the 
blade, then the ear, and after that, the full corn in the ear " ? 



THE SABBATH. 179 

There were six days of creation. Upon these, and upon 
their meaning, very much may be found in the writings of 
the New Church. In this brief Essay, we can attempt to 
give but a slight glimpse of that meaning. 

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth. And the earth was without form and void ; and 
darkness was upon the face of the deep ; and the spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 
Let there be light ; and there was light. And God saw the 
light that it was good ; and God divided the light from the 
darkness. And God called the 'light day, and the darkness 
he called night. And the evening and the morning were 
the first day." 

The earth, previous to all regeneration, is without form 
and void, for the earth here, as often elsewhere, represents 
man ; because man stands in the same relation to God that 
the earth stands in to the sun, and is only made fertile and 
capable of life by receiving from Him the love and wisdom 
which correspond to the heat and light of the sun. And 
man is without form and void ; for he is not now in the 
divine image, which is his true form, nor has he within him 
anything of genuine and real good, before this first begin- 
ning of regeneration. His conduct may be all that men 
can ask ; for intelligent selfishness may possibly (though 
very seldom actually), do all that better motives should do 
for his outward life. But " darkness is on the face of the 
deep." In his own heart ; at that centre of thought and 
feeling where we should find the concealed beginnings of 
character ; in that depth where inner motives are hidden 
out of sight, — there, no light has ever penetrated, no day 
has yet dawned. Now, however, the spirit of God moves 
upon the face of the dark waters and causeth light ; and the 
revelation to the soul of its own darkness will be the first 
effect of the new-born light and the work of the first day. 



180 THE SABBATH. 

" And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of 
the waters ; and let it divide the waters from the waters. 
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which 
were under the firmament from the waters which were 
above the firmament : and it was so. And God called 
the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning 
were the second day." 

It is impossible to give the briefest explanation of these 
words, without again referring to the central doctrine of the 
New Church, which relates to the natural man. Wher- 
ever there has been piety, -salutary affliction, self-examina- 
tion, a portion of this truth has always been known, gener- 
ally at least, and only where there is something of these 
can it be known at all. 

There is in all men a twofoldedness of being, which al- 
most amounts to a double consciousness. There is an inner 
nature and an outer nature. There is an inner nature 
which first receives influent life, and through which it 
reaches the outer nature. There is that part of the man 
which is most in contact with the influences that impart life 
and character ; and that part of him which is most in con- 
tact with other men and with the world around us ; and in 
this outer part the life and character come forth to view, 
and they are modified or disguised by various causes and 
motives. The internal man — while there is any hope — 
rebukes the sins of the external man, and its selfish indul- 
gences, and retards as far as may be the downward progress. 

Something of this has always been known. But it is 
often explained by saying th5at reason rebukes passion, and 
by similar statements, implying that understanding is al- 
ways right, and affection the only thing in fault. On the 
contrary, there are passions, desires, feelings, and whatever 
else belongs to the will, which take part with the good and 
the true, and shrink from a staining contact with the ex- 



THE SABBATH. 181 

ternal ; and there are views and thoughts, and all forms of 
intellectual existence, which belong to a rationality that 
is wholly external, and therefore unfavorable to genuine 
improvement. 

For there is an external of the will and of the under- 
standing, and an internal of the will and of the understand- 
ing, because both will and understanding together make up 
the man. For the truth of this might I not appeal to the 
experience of all who have listened with earnest and re- 
pentant humility to the voice within, while it rebuked the 
life without. And indeed, where there is not this experi- 
ence, to what purpose, or with what hope, can this subject 
be spoken of at all ? 

Without further delay, then, let me assume that there is 
an internal man, or an internal of man ; and let me say 
that this internal is what is meant by the firmament, (or 
expanse, as it might better be translated,) and by Heaven, 
which this firmament is called. 

Earth and Heaven, when either word is used separately, 
sometimes represent and signify man ; but when they are 
used together, or where either alone is so used that the con- 
text limits the sense, then earth signifies the external of 
man, for this is nearest earth ; and heaven signifies the 
internal of man, because this is nearest to heaven. 

When the first day of regeneration has passed by, and 
the work of that day has been done, and " the light divided 
from the darkness " in our own minds, — we are then to 
take the next step of regeneration, if we continue to go for- 
ward. Then we recognize the internal man, and we listen 
to it ; we recognize the firmament within us, the distinct 
and abiding line of division and separation ; and then we 
know that never again, if we regard our soul's health, must 
we confound the waters which are above this firmament 
with those which are beneath. For those which are above 
16 



182 THE SABBATH. 

are from heaven, and we perceive them to be heavenly, and 
call them so, and we know that they offer to lift us upwards 
to their source. While those which are beneath are, as we 
now know full well, of the earth, and earthly. 

To persons quite unacquainted with what is termed, in 
the New Church, the science of correspondence, we should 
state that waters signify things intellectual, — in a good 
sense truths, in a bad sense falsities, — because the func- 
tions of water upon earth, and in the nourishment and 
cleansing of the human body, are analogous to those which 
truth performs to the mind. A volume would not suffice to 
exhibit, much less to exhaust, this beautiful analogy. Now, 
I can only observe, in passing, that the various washings and 
purifications of the representative Jewish ritual were found- 
ed upon it ; and also the Christian rite of baptism, which 
prefigures that work of washing impurities away by obedi- 
ence to truth, which is to be the constant work of every 
faithful Christian. In such instances as these, this meaning 
is almost obvious ; and it is equally obvious in many other 
texts ; as where the Lord said unto the woman, that, if she 
had asked him, he would have given her " living waters " ; 
and where he stood and cried, " If any one thirst, let him 
come and drink " ; and where it is said, " In that clay shall 
living waters go out from Jerusalem." In other passages, 
this signification is less, or not at all, apparent ; but it exists 
equally everywhere. 

" And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be 
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land ap- 
pear : and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth ; 
and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas ; 
and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the 
earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the 
fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself 
upon the earth : and it was so. And the earth brought forth 



THE SABBATH. 183 

grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree 
yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind ; and 
God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morn- 
ing were the third day." 

Before the work of regeneration teaches him something 
of himself, the external man supposes that he is quite good 
enough. He has many truths ; many knowledges of what 
is good and right, derived perhaps from Scripture, and the 
preaching of the Word, and from the common stock which 
belongs to all men in society. All of these he deems his 
own. He does not know that they are not his own. That 
because he has never adopted, obeyed, and loved them, he 
is as untouched and unaffected by them as if they were 
another's. But when the third day of regeneration has 
come, and obedience to the truths he possesses, which is its 
particular work, has become established in the mind, then 
the delusion passes away. The waters beneath the firma- 
ment are gathered together ; the truths which are in the ex- 
ternal man, but not his by love and life, are gathered before 
his eyes into their own place. He sees that they are in the 
natural memory only ; and this it is which is called the Sea. 
The Sea ! What is this vast and ever-tossing waste but a 
collection of waters, which, fructifying nothing, leave what- 
ever they are in contact with barren as the sands of their 
encircling shores. Still, it forms the great treasury whence 
must ever be derived the waters that are drawn up by the 
sun and raised to heaven, and thence descending fertilize 
the earth and fill it with life. And in the memory, the out- 
ermost of our faculties, all our truths and knowledges accu- 
mulate. And barren indeed they are, barren indeed they 
make whatever they reach, while merely natural and self- 
ish ; that is, until they are drawn upwards by the sun, and 
ascend to the heaven of the mind, to the internal man, and 
thence descend to give life to the external, in what the 
Prophet calls "showers of blessings." 



184 THE SABBATH. 

This obedience comes from and evinces a true repent- 
ance ; and when obedience and repentance do their work, 
the external man perceives and acknowledges how small a 
part of him the truth possesses, excepting the memory. He 
regards these truths, when spiritualized and vitalized by re- 
ligion, as bearing the fertilizing influences of heaven ; and 
seems to himself without them as the parched desert. The 
dry land appears. • But in this humiliating conviction there 
is truth ; vital truth ; living water ; for even thus it begins 
to moisten the ground, and the first-fruits of repentance 
appear. Life begins. In its external manifestation, life di- 
vides itself, in correspondence with its internal essence, into 
three general forms ; that of the vegetable world, — that of 
the air and waters, — that of the solid land. The first of 
these, which is the product of the third day, is the lowest. 
The next appears on the fifth day ; the last, only on the 
sixth day. 

Of this third day, or state, the characterizing work is re- 
pentance. And so far as it is done, the external man — our 
conduct, and all that part of our character which we exhibit 
to the world — becomes what it should be. This is not 
perfect, and there will be yet further improvement in it. 
But it is only in the internal man that progress of a new 
kind occurs ; one separated from the former by distinct prin- 
ciples, one which shall constitute a new day, and begin a 
new series of days. 

" And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of 
heaven, to divide the day from the night ; and let them be 
for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. And 
let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give 
light upon the earth : and it was so. And God made two 
great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser 
light to rule the night : and the stars also. And God set 
them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the 



THE SABBATH. 185 

earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to 
divide the light from the darkness ; and God saw that it was 
good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth 
day." 

There has been light, some light, from the beginning of 
all regeneration. But it has been a diffused light which 
did not disclose its origin. It was as the light of a sky per- 
petually shrouded with cloud. The rays of the sun, of the 
moon, even of the stars, confusedly penetrate the veil ; but 
if it were never withdrawn, we should never know that 
there was a sun, or a moon, or a star. But when the ex- 
ternal man has conformed itself to the laws of God, the in- 
ternal is opened to new influences, and receives a brighter 
illustration. 

From the natural sun both heat and light radiate. Both 
reach the moon, but she reflects upon us only the light. 
From the stars they come mingled ; but in their long jour- 
ney they are nearly lost ; of some, the sparkling light strikes 
upon the eye, but of none does the warmth reach us. 

From the Sun of heaven both love and wisdom issue. 
But of these, love is the greater ; and it is this which the 
sun in the natural firmament represents and signifies. The 
moon, which gives us only light, represents and signifies 
Faith. Love from the spiritual sun enters into our will, 
which, of itself, is neither affection nor desire, but only a 
capacity of receiving the divine love and of modifying that 
love into our affections and desires. This love from God re- 
ceived by us, modified but not perverted, is the greater light 
which rules the day ; for it is day with us when love rules. 
Then is our sky unclouded ; and the unimpeded splendor falls 
upon an earth glowing with warm life and full of beauty. 

But the night cometh ; to all it comes. Yet, when our 
sun seems to set beneath our sea, as its retiring radiance 
dwells and lingers upon the waters of memory, and is re- 
16* 



186 THE SABBATH. 

luctant to leave them in gloom and in darkness, and we are 
cold and are sensible of our coldness, — even then, if we 
have Faith, a true, pure faith in God our father, it will 
rise over the troubled waves and touch them with tender 
light, and the earth will rejoice ; rejoice in silence and in 
hope as the softened loveliness of night spreads over it, 
until the dayspring from on high revisits us again. 

And there are also stars. For we have many — almost 
innumerable — knowledges of what is true and good, which 
are too far from our hearts to affect them with any warmth, 
too far for us to measure or appreciate their magnitude or 
worth, too dim to be remembered when we possess and en- 
joy the full life of active day. But these also come out to 
our thoughts and add something to the light, and much to 
the soothing loveliness of the dark hours when the glow of 
love and the excitement of action have passed away, and 
we can only wait, in Faith and in Hope. 

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above 
the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God cre- 
ated great whales, and every living creature that moveth, 
which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, 
and every winged fowl after his kind ; and God saw that it 
was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and 
multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multi- 
ply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were 
the fifth day." 

If the repentance of the third day improved the external 
man, and if, in the light of the sun and the moon and 
the stars of the fourth day, the darkness which ascribed re- 
form and goodness and truth unto ourselves was dissipated, 
as we looked upon and recognized the source of light, then 
are we ready for the fifth day. In this day the waters are 
filled with living fishes, and the air with birds. 



THE SABBATH. 187 

The waters, or the sea, represent the natural memory. 
The truths and knowledges therein are as yet dead. For 
while we believe them to be our own, and to have origi- 
nated in ourselves, they are tainted with a profound falsity. 
They are spiritually dead. From this death they are now 
commanded to come forth, to awake, arise, and live. "We 
know them now to be not ours, but His ; to be from Him 
and of Him. And then the waters teem with life. From 
the great whales, or universal truths, to the most minute 
and transient thoughts of truth, all live. We connect them 
all with the Source of life ; and the voiceless creatures of 
the deep speak his praise. 

An example may make this more intelligible. Let us 
consider the precept, " Do good unto others." This is one 
of the most universal of truths. Every person knows it. 
By it the fabric of society was constructed, and is filled and 
cemented. But at first its government is compulsory, and 
it has no support but in force. The most selfish of men is 
compelled to be performing uses continually. He buys, he 
sells, he digs the solid ground, he makes, he goes or sends 
to the uttermost parts of the earth, for that which his neigh- 
bor needs. In doing all this, he never thinks of his neigh- 
bor except as the instrument of his own gain. Neverthe- 
less, he is most useful, most indispensable, to his neighbor. 
Such is he while he remains a merely natural and unre- 
generate man ; and then this great truth is in him, but is 
dead. But if he comes out of this state ; if he repents, 
reforms, and acquires and uses the means of spiritual im- 
provement, his character changes. Not outwardly perhaps, 
but inwardly. He is now as useful as he was before, and 
perhaps not more useful, so far as the bodily welfare of 
his neighbor is concerned. But he no longer looks at the 
law " Do good unto others " as a thing of his own, which 
he may do for his own advantage, or omit doing at his own 



188 THE SABBATH. 

pleasure. He sees it now to be the law of God ; the gift 
of God's benevolence ; given to men that they may receive 
from him the happiness of doing good. Now he delights 
and rejoices in his own success, because of his neighbor in 
the first place, and for himself only in the second place and 
in a subordinate degree. Then this truth lives. It was at 
first wholly dead ; then, as life began, it stood before him as 
a law ; now it is within him as a prompter and a guide. 
He knows now its origin. He feels that it is full of life, 
and that it gives him life. 

It was said that water represents and signifies truth. As 
all things in man's mind may be referred to his will or to 
his understanding, so all things in the universe belong in 
their representation to the will or the understanding ; to 
that which he loves or that which he thinks ; to good or to 
truth. As the broadest division, it may be said that fluids 
refer to what is of truth, and solids to what is of good. We 
must pass by the enticing opportunity to exhibit the illus- 
trations of this analogy presented by the constitution of the 
universe, and remark only that it brings within the same 
general correspondence and significance the ocean of wa- 
ters, and 

" The sky, 
Spread like an ocean hung on high." 

This, too, the air, in this fifth day of regeneration, becomes 
full of life. For there are truths and thoughts which love to 
leave the earth. They seek to rise above it ; to look down 
upon and understand this ultimate, external creation, and as- 
certain and comprehend its laws and its structure, and the 
true relation of its parts to each other, and of all to their 
source. How full of life are these winged thoughts, these 
birds of the mind ; how full of rejoicing and abounding life, 
when the sun of heaven rises and shines upon them. They 
no longer creep as in the dark ; but their course lies clear 



« THE SABBATH. 189 

before them ; they pursue it with exulting flight, and the 
rational and truth-loving intellect feels that it is borne 
upwards as on eagles' wings. In the third chapter of the 
Revelations, our Lord says, "If any man will open the 
door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me." 
And in the nineteenth chapter it is said that John " saw an 
angel standing in the sun ; and he cried with a loud voice, 
saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come 
and gather yourselves together to the supper of the great 
God." Gladly do they hear ; gladly do the fowls of heaven 
now gather to that supper, and fill themselves with heavenly 
food. 

As the whole animal world represents the world of hu- 
manity, so the birds of heaven represent, not merely such 
thoughts and truths as these, but persons who possess and 
cherish, and are governed by, these thoughts and truths. 
To them is this invitation given. The angel (or messen- 
ger) of the Sun of righteousness is every influence pro- 
ceeding from Him. His great supper is made ready ; for 
the spiritual sense of the Word is opened, and all who hun- 
ger and thirst after righteousness can find there the truth, 
the instruction, the help, the food,, which is adapted to 
every need. 

They now hear this invitation, and hasten to the supper 
spread for them, in whom repentance has done its work, 
and in whose spiritual sky Love and Faith are fixed and 
burning lights. To all is the table of the Lord now open ; 
and all may come to it who would eat of angels' food, and 
learn and lead the life of heaven. 

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living 
creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast 
of the earth after his kind : and it was so. And God made 
the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their 
kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his 



190 THE SABBATH. 

kind ; and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us 
make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
So God created man in his own image, in the image of 
God created he him ; male and female created he them. 
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruit- 
ful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it ; 
and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the 
fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you 
every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the 
earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree 
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to- every 
beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to 
everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein is life, 
I have given every green herb for meat : and it was so. 
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, 
it was very good. And the evening and the morning 
were the sixth day." 

The sixth is the last day of the labors of God in creating 
the universe ; and the particulars of this work are set forth 
with more minuteness than those of any former day. It 
will be well to consider them separately. 

On this day the animals which walk the earth are creat- 
ed ; and now also man begins to live. 

As the ocean and the air refer in their correspondence 
and significance to truth or the understanding, so the solid 
earth refers to the will ; and the things which walk upon it 
refer to the affections. 

There are always an abundance of them ; but infinitely 
do they vary in their character. In very childhood we 
learn to love them who love us. This love we continue to 



THE SABBATH. 191 

exercise and indulge through life ; and it need not be self- 
ish ; for we may again become as little children, and learn 
a new lesson of disinterested affection. We begin with 
giving, that we may get as much again ; with loving our 
friends, and them only. But when all the days, or all the 
progressively advancing states, of regeneration, are finished ; 
when the light has shone, and we distinguish it from the 
darkness ; and repentance has produced thorough reforma- 
tion ; and Love and Faith are established in our minds ; 
and the truths and knowledges we have acquired are ele- 
vated by a clear perception of their source, and vivified by 
that desire for good which would apply them to life, and 
make of them instruments of use and means of improve- 
ment and of happiness for others ; — then are we ready to 
take the last step. Then our affections will begin to have 
a pure and genuine life. We shall learn to love the Lord 
with all the heart and soul, and our neighbor as ourself. 
And we practically learn that, when we love the Lord our 
God with all our heart, his love becomes in us the love of 
our neighbor. The sixth day's work is done ; and man 
now begins to live. 

He has now indeed dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that 
moveth upon the earth. For all things of nature, of the 
nature spread abroad, above, beneath, and around him, and 
all things of the nature within him, yield obedience to him 
as to their Sovereign Lord, and gladly fulfil the functions 
for which they were created, in doing as he bids ; for he is 
now the servant of God, and therefore their master. 

So too are all things meat, or food, for him, and for his 
thoughts and affections. Everything which exists bears 
uneffaceably impressed upon it the story of its birth and 
the name of its Heavenly Father. And how will Science 
exult when it becomes her office to read the lessons writ- 



192 THE SABBATH. 

ten upon the opened pages of creation ! Even now the 
good man finds that all true knowledge feeds his soul ; gives 
him a clearer perception of the ways of God ; illustrates 
His laws ; makes more plain the path that leads to His 
throne, and gives strength to walk therein, and encounter 
and overcome its thronging obstacles. 

It is said, " Male and female created He them." Pre- 
vious to this time, no mention has been made of sex. It 
was as true of the fishes of the sea, of the birds of the air, 
and of the beasts of the earth, that they were created male 
and female, as of man ; but of him it is first said. 

If we would inquire into the significance of this fact, we 
must begin with remarking, that the distinction of sex is 
founded upon the distinction between the will and the un- 
derstanding. 

In saying this, as so often happens when one endeavors 
to present the doctrines of the New Church, we find our- 
selves announcing a principle which must startle, from its 
novelty, and repel, from its absolute opposition to prevail- 
ing notions, and be indeed unintelligible to readers who do 
not possess an elementary knowledge of the laws of crea- 
tion and the inter-relations of all created things ; for these 
alone can enable one to understand such a proposition, or 
even to look upon it in a favorable light. All that we shall 
now attempt is a suggestive sketch of the leading princi- 
ples which bear upon this subject. 

In God, Love and Wisdom are one. But they are not 
a one which is made by fusing together and confounding 
distinct elements ; but a unity which springs from a perfect 
conjunction of two things which are perfectly distinct. We 
are speaking of God ; of the Infinite and Unapproachable ; 
and while, as we venture to lift our eyes towards his 
throne of light, we feel how infinitely below the dread re- 



THE SABBATH. 



193 



ality our highest thoughts must fall, and yet how difficult 
it is to give expression even to these low and bounded 
thoughts, we will nevertheless endeavor to present what 
must needs be a dim and shadowy outline of the manner in 
which He repeats himself in his creatures, to the end that 
his infinite blessedness may, in their measure, be also 
theirs. 

In God, Love and Wisdom are both infinitely perfect, 
and are perfectly and infinitely distinct. Yet is their con- 
duction into unity also perfect ; and from this conjunction 
springs the infinite blessedness of God. 

Enough of the resemblance of this falls upon us to ena- 
ble us, in some degree, to comprehend it. The Infinite 
Love of God desires ever and infinitely, that which his wis- 
dom ever contemplates ; and his Infinite Wisdom is ever 
engaged with infinite activity in the fulfilment of his de- 
sires and purposes. It is thus that they are perfectly one. 
From this perfect conjunction springs the Infinite Power of 
God. By it and through it are all things created ; and 
there is nothing that exists, substance or force or law, which 
does not exist because the Love of God desired it, and the 
Wisdom of God saw how it might exist and be a means of 
blessing ; and from this union of Love and Wisdom, Power 
was put forth, and the thing created. 

Ever united and conjoined are these two elements of the 
Divine Nature ; ever active and productive in their union ; 
and therefore is creation a perpetual work, and therefore is 
He ever and infinitely Blessed. 

His Love causes him to desire that this blessedness 
should be imparted, as far as may be, to man ; and his 
Wisdom provides the way of doing this, by repeating upon 
all creation this distinction and this conjunction. Thus, He 
creates in man a will and an understanding. The will, as 
whoever writes upon this subject must often say, is not 
17 



194 THE SABBATH. 

affection or desire ; it is only a spiritual form, organism, or 
vessel, capable of receiving from God his own influent Love, 
and of giving this forth as affection or desire. Just so the 
understanding is neither thought nor knowledge, but a spir- 
itual form, or organism, or vessel, capable of receiving the 
influent wisdom of God, and of giving this back as thought 
and knowledge. 

Man being thus created, with vessels receptive of the 
two essential elements of divine life, and thus filled with 
life, Divine Providence for ever thereafter has for its end 
and purpose the union and conjunction of the will and un- 
derstanding in man, so that a portion of the Divine blessed- 
ness may be his also. 

This is affected when man desires that only which the 
truth he possesses tells him is good. Then is there no con- 
flict between them ; then are they in harmony with each 
other, with the universe around them, with the universe 
within them ; with all the laws of being, and with Him 
who alone is Being in Himself. 

But God also makes manifest this essential relation of 
Love and Wisdom, by the two sexes, which correspond at 
once to the essential elements of the Divine Life, and to 
those of the derived human life. Man represents Wisdom ; 
woman represents Love. Hence, that these two may be 
conjoined into unity, is marriage. Hence too is the worth 
and sanctity of marriage ; far transcending all thought, all 
conception, all language. It is in its own nature holy, heav- 
enly, eternal. It completes man's nature, and fills his life 
with the best of all that in it is good, and consummates his 
creation into the image of God. There are some who 
know this upon earth ; and all in heaven know it as none 
can know it here. A true idea of marriage recognizes all 
the obligations of law, and is even thankful for this outer 
guardianship of the sanctuary ; but it rests on Love. It 



THE SABBATH. 195 

rests upon a Love which makes the husband feel that in 
his wife he has the best gift of God, and that gift through 
which other high and holy gifts come to him ; a living soul 
that lives to soften, refine, elevate, and warm his heart, and 
to do this because it is for all this the appointed medium 
between God and him. And the wife too grows in love 
and in joy, as her chosen one guides and illustrates her 
thoughts, and opens her eyes to the ever-strengthening 
light of truth and of heaven. This perfect love casteth out 
fear ; for unfaithfulness, uncertainty, distrust, and jealousy 
are as impossible, as between the healthy heart that pours 
its living current into the lungs to be cleansed there from 
all impurity, and the lungs which gladly and trustingly re- 
ceive that which fills them with warmth and life. 

This union and conjunction of Love and Wisdom in the 
Divine Nature, is the cause of all effect and of all produc- 
tion. Of it, the Universe is born. And therefore in that 
Universe, which bears the impress of its Source and Au- 
thor, the conjugal principle is everywhere the cause of all 
production and effect. 

This is true, not of animals only ; for within a few years 
it has become known as the certain cause of all reproduc- 
tion in the vegetable kingdom. Lower, in the mineral 
world, where reproduction is more obscure and causation 
operates in a darkness which science has not yet been able 
to illuminate, there are already intimations of an analogous 
result. They may be found in the nearly admitted princi- 
ple, that all solidity implies crystallization, and all crys- 
tallization implies the meeting, conjunction, and repose in 
unity of two principles or elements drawn together and 
held together by affinity ; of which the combining alkali 
and acid may perhaps be taken as types. 

Nor is it true only in the world without us. For which 
of our actions is there, what action or motion can there be, 



196 THE SABBATH. 

which does not exist, because desire in some form or other 
wishes it, and thought or mind in some way sees how it 
may be, and both co-operate to produce the act itself? This 
act may be brief, spontaneous, and mechanical. But for 
every note of the rapidest piece of music, it is certain that 
there is a distinct exertion of the nervous influence sent 
from the brain through the proper threads to the motive 
muscles, however incredible this may seem to those who 
know nothing of anatomy. And as certainly is it proved 
by an analysis of the mental act that sets the brain in mo- 
tion, that there was in it volition to desire, and thought to 
design, and that both united to cause the act, which was 
the child of the marriage union of the will and the under- 
standing. 

Everywhere we find this law. It hides its head in the 
clouds about the throne of God. Its feet rest upon the 
earth. Its hands have fashioned everything that is ; and 
its breath is the breath of life for all existence. 

Such is the foundation of the distinction between the 
sexes. This distinction is now first mentioned on the sixth 
day, in this last stage of creation, or of that internal crea- 
tion which is regeneration, because now the internal distinc- 
tion which the external one corresponds to and represents 
is first recognized. Now first do the will and under- 
standing perceive and acknowledge their mutual functions 
and relations ; now first know in each other that which is 
necessary to each other's fulness. Hitherto there has been 
conflict and opposition between them. What the heart 
desired, the understanding rebuked and prohibited ; and 
the understanding insisted upon renunciation, and it pre- 
vailed. Now are they reconciled, conjoined, made one. 
The affections are all turned to the Lord and to the neigh- 
bor, for self serves only and is glad to serve ; and the un- 
derstanding has no thought which is not devoted to the 



THE SABBATH. 197 

furtherance of these affections. Henceforth the love and 
the thought are one ; they are married ; and the offspring 
of this marriage is eternal happiness. God has joined them 
together ; and man will not separate them ; for he is now 
created into the image and likeness of God. 

Hitherto has God looked upon his works and pro- 
nounced them good ; but now it is said that God saw every- 
thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. 

And now is man ready for the dawning of the Sab- 
bath. 



" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all 
the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his 
work which he had made ; and he rested on the seventh day 
from all his work which he had made. And God blessed 
the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had 
rested from all his work which God created and made." 

"Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sab- 
bath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, 
for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and 
the children of Israel for ever ; for in six days the Lord 
made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested 
and was refreshed." 

" Verily my Sabbaths shall ye keep, for it is a sign be- 
tween me and you throughout your generations ; that ye 
may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you." 

" Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God 
hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labor and do 
17* 



198 THE SABBATH. 

all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the 
Lord thy God. Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy 
son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid- 
servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor thy cattle, nor thy 
stranger that is within thy gates ; that thy man-servant 
and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And re- 
member that thou, wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and 
the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
hand and by a stretched out arm ; therefore the Lord thy 
God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." 

In this last passage a reason is given for the observance 
of the Sabbath, which seems to be totally distinct from that 
given before. In most of the places in which this day is 
mentioned, the reason assigned for its holiness is, that God 
rested from the work of creating heaven and earth "upon 
that day. In this last-quoted passage another reason is 
stated. We are commanded to remember that the Lord 
brought us up out of Egypt, and therefore to keep the day 
holy. There is in this an apparent inconsistency. In the 
literal sense two separate reasons are given, which are per- 
fectly distinct and bear no relation to each other. And this 
is one of the many instances in which a difficulty or dark- 
ness of the literal sense disappears at once in the light of 
the spiritual sense. There, these two reasons are one. The 
Sabbath is the creation of the spiritual man ; the Sabbath 
is deliverance from Egypt ; one as much as the other, be- 
cause they are precisely the same thing. Egypt signifies 
the natural man ; and the bondage of Egypt represents and 
signifies the bondage of sin, of evil, of falsehood. From 
these we are delivered when we have permitted the Lord 
to create us anew. And this is His work. 

It is His work, and not man's. Every thought of man 
that he is doing it of himself alone ; that by his own arm he 
getteth the victory over the fearful assailants whose success 



THE SABBATH. 199 

would be his ruin ; that by his own strength he is building in 
his own heart an abiding-place for the Most High ; — every 
thought or feeling of this kind retards the work, makes it 
more difficult and less complete. If we regard the com- 
mandment of the Sabbath as binding in its literal sense, and 
so obey it, on that day we do nothing. And this was com- 
manded as a sign of the state of mind which recognizes in 
God the only source of life, and by its assurance of his 
almighty aid gives us hope, energy, and earnest activity, 
but never forgets that, of ourselves, we do nothing. And 
yet man has much, very much to do. He has his part in 
all that can be done ; for his share of the work is indispen- 
sable to its accomplishment. 

Thus we are brought to contemplate once more that most 
important doctrine of the New Church, — regeneration 
through freedom. This doctrine teaches that our Father in 
heaven, like a kind father upon earth who has received 
the divine love into his own heart, and suffered it to become 
his love, does all that may be done to lead, persuade, and 
so induce an erring child to renounce the wrong and choose 
the right; he regards force and compulsion as sometimes 
necessary, as sometimes breaking the chain of habit, or 
otherwise producing a condition of mind in which the vol- 
untary choice of right is possible ; but as, in themselves, 
having no power to reform, or regenerate. Hence, through- 
out man's life the question is constantly occurring, " Choose 
ye this day whom ye will serve." It is a choice that must 
be made every day, or in every state ; and which, being 
made, determines for that day, whether he will work with 
God or contend against Him. 

Hence we may see why the efforts of Divine Provi- 
dence to effect man's regeneration are represented as not 
only a gradual, but a laborious work ; and what it is which 
makes it so ; for it is man's resistance. Precisely so far as 



200 THE SABBATH. 

he opposes these efforts, they are labors. They do not 
cease on this account, or we should be lost. They do not 
cease, for the love which prompts them and fills them is 
infinite. But because they encounter opposition and binder- 
ance, and opposition which this very love will not crush 
and annihilate, but tenderly regards and seeks to win over 
into co-operation, therefore these efforts are represented as 
labors. They are the labors of God in renewing a right 
spirit within us, in constructing the spiritual man, and in 
building around him an external life and conduct in exact 
correspondence with the truth and the good implanted in 
the understanding and the will. They are the days of the 
labors of God in creating man and building for him a 
world. 

And man too labors while this work is going on. '" Six 
days shalt thou labor." This doom is fixed upon us by our 
weakness, our blindness, and our sins. It is they which 
make it so difficult and so painful to be good ; and it is they 
which cover up evil with inexhaustible disguises, and call it 
good. But the pain, the difficulty, the disguise and decep- 
tion, now have passed away ; and in the Sabbath, we too 
rest from our labors. Of this rest which is true, internal, 
and permanent, in the true and internal Sabbath, the out- 
ward rest of the outward Sabbath is a symbol and remem- 
brancer. 

This work of the Divine mercy never ceases ; it is con- 
tinually more active ; always the love which animates it 
grows into a more perfect fulness ; always it is a greater 
putting forth of the power of the Omnipotent ; and always 
it is less and less a labor on the part of man and on the 
part of God. For the improvement of the human character 
does not terminate with regeneration ; for this itself, through- 
out eternity, is never ending, still beginning. But it is no 
longer a labor when man begins to co-operate freely and 



THE SABBATH. 201 

willingly with the Divine Providence ; then " God rests 
and is refreshed." Then the love of God is not withstood 
and hindered. It goes forth from his own unclouded bless- 
edness to impart blessing to man ; it meets with welcome 
and not resistance, and is no longer dimmed and marred by 
a reluctant reception. 

Surely we need no longer ask why this day of rest is 
Holy. It bears in Christendom the beautiful name of the 
Lord's day ; and it is called his, because it is his day. In 
heaven as on earth there are days and nights ; not caused 
by the periodical presence or absence of the sun of the 
angels, for they never suffer from its absolute withdrawal. 
But there are states of mind in which the angels are 
brought to a more vivid remembrance, to an intense.r con- 
sciousness of their inherent weakness and sinfulness ; the 
shadow of the past falls upon them, and it is night. Then 
they learn a new lesson of self-humiliation ; they acquire 
a new ability to give themselves unreservedly into the 
hand of Providence ; to receive, to cherish, to love the life 
of love which flows from Him, and to rejoice in the con- 
sciousness that it is His life given to them. As we, in the 
dark silence of our nights, acquire new vigor for the work 
of another day, so do they, by the lesson of their night, ac- 
quire a new and greater capacity for the reception of bless- 
ing. And their night also leads to day, and an evening and 
a morning belong to all their days. 

"We may therefore see that the days and nights of the 
spirit are brighter and darker states of mind ; that it is day 
with the soul when its sun shines upon it ; and therefore the 
Lord's day signifies a state or condition which is His ; one in 
which He governs ; one in which His own love is received 
by man unresistingly, and permitted to bring with it some 
measure of His own peace ; one in which the inner and the 
outer life of man conform to His law, and therefore His 



202 THE SABBATH. 

unclouded Presence shines and fills the soul with the light 
and the warmth of heaven. 

During the six days of labor and preparation, the under- 
standing reigns. In all of them, there is a desire to be and 
to do that which we should not be and should not do. The 
truth tells us that we should not, and thus opposes the 
desire ; and it is this opposition and this conflict which 
produce the labors of the week. We begin with obeying 
the truth. We renounce the evil thing which we desire, 
and should greatly enjoy. And after a sufficient course of 
renunciation and denial, the desire for that evil thing dies 
for want of sustenance, and passes away. But we cannot 
be without desire and affection, for then should we be with- 
out life ; and as the desire and affection for evil faint and 
die, in their stead grow up a desire and affection for the 
opposite good. But this new affection the truth does not 
rebuke nor oppose. With this it is in perfect harmony. 
And in every succeeding day of life, here or in heaven, the 
truth by its encouragement and approval makes the affec- 
tion stronger, and the affection itself, as it is indulged and 
we perceive its effect, and see that it is good in all its rela- 
tions and consequences, illustrates and enforces the truth. 
Thus, in the Sabbath, truth no longer rules. Love reigns 
now ; and one definition of this day might be, the reign of 
Love. The sovereignty of truth was hard and harsh. It 
commanded, it threatened, it punished. Now that Love is 
sovereign, it does not retaliate ; it is full of joy, and liberal 
in its gifts of joy. And it rules only as the prevailing 
and characterizing tone rules in a strain of perfect har- 
mony. 

We see from this why the work of purification and ref- 
ormation must be slow and gradual. We may instantly 
renounce a sin ; nor can we renounce it too soon or too 
perfectly ; but we cannot in a moment overcome the love 



THE SABBATH. 203 

of it ; for that dies slowly. Only when good affections — 
which cannot grow up in a single night — are ready to 
take the place of the departing evils, are we safe. In this 
direction should we look; there seek the assurance that 
we are in the right path ; otherwise our very reform may 
be doubtful and impure. We may be only driving out 
devils by the prince of the devils ; for this we do when we 
abstain from sin only by the overmastering power of pride 
and self-approbation. In the twentieth chapter of Exodus, 
the Lord said to the children of Israel : " I will not drive 
the nations out from before thee in one year ; lest the land 
become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against 
thee. By little and little will I drive them out from before 
thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land." 

Most holy is the Sabbath day ; and from the love of God 
comes down the law that we should keep it holy, because it 
is good for our souls to recognize the holiness of this faint 
shadow of the peace of God. It is indeed a faint shadow ; 
a dim and broken outline. But it comes very far, even to 
us at the beginning of our long journey, and is then the 
promise of the blessing towards which our weary steps are 
tending. It comes, because the recognition of it even 
thus is a good beginning ; it is one step forward ; it works 
in unison with whatever else is a good work ; and it is a 
fitting preparation for that progress of which it accompanies 
every step, changing as we change, and resuming more of 
its original brightness as it draws near and draws us near 
to its Sun. 

The command, in the literal sense, is simply to rest from 
labor ; it is rest, and nothing else. But even there it is 
good. The reason goes with the command, and makes it 
good ; we rest because we are so bidden ; and a literal ob- 
servance of the Sabbath, because it is so commanded, will 
not fail to do some good to the soul. 



204 THE SABBATH. 

This literal observance of the literal command was all 
that was known to the Jews. But to them their church was 
given, with its minute ritual and its law penetrating into all 
the corners of life, because they embodied and represented 
that purely natural mind, which belongs to all men and is 
the basis of all character. With the Jews, nothing above 
this was developed, and therefore they had only the truth 
which speaks to this plane of the mind. And now there 
are many in whom nothing higher is developed ; and wisely 
and mercifully is it provided that the same words may be 
heard by them ; and well is it for them when they obey 
these words even as they hear them. And woe is it, deep, 
bitter, and eternal woe, to those who would rise above this 
lower plane, with all its law and prohibition, only to be free 
to do their own pleasure ; only to liberate self; only to es- 
cape from a restraint which is to them a bondage, because 
they love the sin which it rebukes. They do not rise above 
it, for they sink below it. Let us rise in our understanding 
of the Sabbath ; in our estimation of its value ; in our ob- 
servance of the law ; but not so let us rise, or we shall fall 
to rise no more. 

As the literal command is the basis of all higher mean- 
ing, and as this is addressed to those elements of the human 
character upon which all others are built, we will first seek 
for the good which the law effects, in the observance of it 
on this lower plane. 

The man whose whole life is bound up with the active 
interests of this world, rests from his labors one day in the 
week, because it is God's will that he should so rest. Why 
is this His will? First, because there is much in these 
labors which must not be permitted to lie upon the mind 
like an unbroken chain ; much that must not become an 
indurated habit ; much of which this interruption weakens 
the hold, so that it may be shaken off when the better in- 



THE SABBATH. 205 

fluences which are at work upon the mind find themselves 
able to do their work better. There is much in the busi- 
ness life of nearly all men that is intensely worldly- It is 
self-seeking from morn till night. It is through the whole 
week an earnest, unresting desire and effort to gain, — to 
gain from one's neighbor, to gain over one's neighbor. And 
if the Sabbath comes to bid this hunger cease its everlast- 
ing moan, to charm this greed, if not to sleep, at least to in- 
activity, it comes with a blessing. 

Moreover, if there is any conscience there, and this the 
observance of the day would seem to indicate, there will 
come with the repose of the day somewhat of meditation, of 
study, of worship ; a few thoughts glide in on angels' wings, 
and bring a little strength against the devil of the ensuing 
week. If the day is observed in any way because it is 
thought to be God's will, then is there recognition of him, 
and obedience to him. These may open the inner gates of 
the soul. Good influences enter ; they inspire some reflec- 
tion upon the last week, some consciousness of wrong, some 
purpose of amendment ; something which shall come up 
once or twice next week in the thought, that while we are 
in this world we have to prepare for another. This good 
may be very slight ; very faint and feeble, and ready to 
perish ; but it may not perish. 

As one advances from that condition of mind in which 
truth seems to him despotic law, his Sabbath feels the lib- 
erating touch of this growing sense of freedom. "We do 
not now ask, Is it indeed an authentic law, which I must 
obey ? "We begin to see the truth of the precept as it is 
founded upon the nature of man, and the good of it as it 
responds to the exigencies of that nature. The day is no 
longer one of inactive rest. It is not merely or principally 
cessation from employment. It becomes much more than 
mere negation. We gladly recognize the opportunity it 
18 



206 THE SABBATH. 

gives for that social worship in which brother strengthens 
brother, and the light from the Altar and the Book around 
which . they gather is reflected from heart to heart, and 
grows and brightens on its way. We find some appropriate 
works of charity to which a part of this unimpeded day 
may be given. Nor, when we feel that our minds cannot 
be borne upwards with untiring wings, do we fear to re- 
sort to innocent and not inappropriate recreations. These 
may be found in family or social intercourse, in literature 
or in art, or in the enjoyment of the exuberant beauty with 
which our Father has, for us, clothed his creation. Even 
over this intercourse there may be a Sabbath charm. And 
while we wander abroad, inhaling the blessings which float 
like perfume on the sweet air, there may be religion, wor- 
ship, progress, in the still and solemn gladness with which 
our hearts answer 

" The Sabbath silence of the hills." 

As the moral state improves, the need and use of the 
Sabbath do not disappear, nor lessen. It is always a day 
when the mind may turn from its daily cares, its necessary 
worldly occupations, and may look, fixedly and distinctly, 
upon the goal which it seeks to approach. We labor under 
an error, when the thoughts of another life diminish our in- 
terest in this. Such thoughts are wrong thoughts. They 
sever two conditions of being which are inseparably con- 
nected. Then only is a thought of another life a just 
thought, when it imparts immeasurable and infinite value 
to this ; when it moulds all its moments into beginnings of 
eternities ; when it reminds us that every day, and every 
hour, we are sowing seed that will not die, — seed that 
will hereafter find, above or below, a kindly soil, — seed 
that may grow in heaven into a tree of life. Such thoughts 
as these do not send us to our week-day's work crippled 



THE SABBATH. 207 

and clogged and dull. They urge us, perhaps, as earnestly, 
if not as feverishly, as avarice or ambition might. For 
those therefore who fill the week with labor, although that 
labor be itself directed by right motives and to just pur- 
poses, it is well that the Sabbath should bring its calm and 
its silence. We may then look with steadier gaze upon Him 
who " maketh us to lie down in green pastures, and leadeth 
us by the still waters, and restoreth our souls." From 
these waters of peace, gushing from the fountain of His 
Word, we drink as the thirsty drink. We examine the 
past week, and learn from our errors and faults how to 
make them less, and how to make each week as it passes 
bear us one step forward. Nor can this need or this use of 
the Sabbath ever cease or ever diminish. 

If we have succeeded in giving anything approaching to 
a just idea of the true significance and worth of the Sab- 
bath, neither will its power over men's minds, nor its uni- 
versality, nor its long endurance, be regarded as wholly 
unexplained, nor will it be thought surprising that refer- 
ences to the Sabbath should be so numerous, both in the 
Old Testament and the Gospels. Frequently is it men- 
tioned by name ; sometimes alluded to in such a manner 
that the allusion is obvious or easily discovered ; and some- 
times referred to more obscurely, and in a way not to be 
discerned without the aid of the spiritual sense of the 
Word. 

In the second chapter of Mark, our Lord " said unto 
them, The Sabbath was made for man " ; and in the next 
verse, " The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." He 
has for ever endeavored, and while His eternal love shall 
last will eudeavor, to lead man to a Sabbath of rest. That 
he might do this more effectually and perfectly, he came 
to earth and put on our nature, with all the hinderances 
which make of the six clays of preparation days of labor 



208 THE SABBATH. 

and of conflict. And as this preparation in us consists in 
the overcoming and removal of those obstacles, so was it 
also with him. But in him was this work perfectly accom- 
plished. In him only was the Sabbath of rest made perfect. 

If Ave have not wholly failed in presenting an intelli- 
gible idea of the state of mind which is meant by the 
Sabbath, it will be understood that it comes from a har- 
mony between the internal man and the external. For 
from this harmony it results, that what the internal receives 
from the Divine influx, that it transmits without impediment, 
finding in the external a prompt and pure reception and a 
manifestation of the truth and good in life. Hence all is 
Peace. In the outer life there is obedience to God, and 
purity, and active usefulness ; and this is the effect of, as it 
is the answer to, an inner life which is vivified by Divine 
influx. 

In our Lord this external was born of Mary, and was 
like our own. His inmost was not from Jehovah, but it was 
Jehovah. And when this external, perfectly cleansed from 
evil by successful resistance to all evil propensity, was unit- 
ed to his inmost, it was necessarily made divine. 

When, in his Humanity, he says that we should be one 
with him as he is one with the Father, he utters the 
great truth which explains his coming and his work. 
He spake in his Humanity, and in that as it had become 
absolutely one with the Divine within. One with him, 
perfectly, we can never be ; but let this unity begin by con- 
scientious resistance of evil, and it will for ever increase 
and grow, and we shall for ever draw nearer to him, and 
nearer to a unity with him. In him, when his human, or 
external, was made Divine, there was no longer any con- 
flict, no longer those temptations and sorrows and unutter- 
able desolation which found expression only in the bloody 
sweat and in the prayer that the cup might pass from him, 



THE SABBATH. 209 

and in the words of anguish, " My God ! my God ! why hast 
thou forsaken me ? " In proportion to the intensity of this 
conflict, of which no created intellect will ever form an ade- 
quate conception, was the peace, the calm, of the Sabbath 
which followed. As he went forward, so must we go. Be- 
cause he went through this dark and painful path, it is open 
for us ; and its darkness is the less, because the light of His 
glory is shining upon it ; and its pain is the less, because 
the Comforter comes from him to be our companion through 
its efforts and its perils. 

This is the Sabbath ; this Divine-Human state is a perfect 
Sabbath. And it was made for man ; it was made by Him, 
by and through that work of toil and sorrow ; made by him 
for man ; made to be given to man ; and when it is given 
and received, and established within us, then is He him- 
self within us, the Lord of the Sabbath of our souls. 



Perhaps an interesting instance of a reference to the 
Sabbath, not apparent in the letter of Scripture, may be 
found in the Lord's Prayer. 

Prayer cannot teach God, the omniscient. It cannot 
make infinite Love more willing to assist us. But it may 
make us more willing and more able to receive assistance. 
This it may do, and always does, when we distinctly ex- 
press a sincere wish for genuine good, together with a be- 
lief that it can come from God alone, and that he is ready 
to give it. For these feelings open the heart, and they 
are stronger, clearer, and more effectual, for expression. 
Prayer, or the expression of this wish, is therefore good, in 
proportion as that which we pray for is genuine good. But 
the Lord's Prayer is necessarily perfect ; necessarily univer- 
18* 



210 THE SABBATH. 

sal"; not that it supersedes or rebukes or prevents other 
prayer ; but that it is itself good for all men, always. 

There is but one universal good ; and that is regenera- 
tion. This therefore must be the object of a perfect and 
universal prayer. And we thus establish an analogy be- 
tween the subject-matter of the Lord's Prayer, and that of 
the first chapters of Genesis ; and this would lead us to ex- 
pect some resemblance between them. In the letter and 
upon the outside, there is none. Let us see if there be any 
within. 

The beginning of the Book of Genesis describes six days 
of spiritual creation, because there are six distinct states into 
which the process of regeneration is divisible ; and the Sab- 
bath of rest comes at their close. Are there these seven 
days also in the Lord's Prayer ? 

If we begin with the supposition of a merely natural 
man, upon whom a ray of religion shines at length, then, 
when the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters, 
and light breaks upon his darkness, the first effect is the 
acknowledgment of a God ; of a God who created him, and 
is far, infinitely far, above him ; and this expresses itself in 
the words, 

" Our Father, who art in the heavens." 

If this acknowledgment be sincere, it cannot but be fol- 
lowed by worship. The things which belong to heaven 
are divided in his mind from those which belong to self. 
The former only are holy in his eyes, and they belong to 
God ; they are the things by which he knows God ; they 
are the name of God ; and he utters the words of wor- 
ship, 

" Hallowed be Thy name." 
Sincere acknowledgment, followed by sincere worship, 



THE SABBATH. 211 

produces necessarily sincere obedience; or an effort after 
obedience. The man sees his external as it is, and it be- 
gins to be clothed with life, because he now endeavors to 
make it conform to the will of God. He wishes to obey ; 
he says, 

" Thy kingdom come." 

Acknowledgment, worship, obedience, would seem to 
complete the external man ; they are the first three days of 
spiritual life. Further improvement, or rather a new and 
distinct kind of improvement, making a new day in the life 
of the soul, must be made within the external. For that, 
nothing more is needed than that what has been done should 
be completed. But a new day, and of a new kind, comes, 
when the great lights of heaven are established in our minds. 
We see what love is, and we would have it become our life. 
We are no longer satisfied with mere obedience ; we strive 
to obey through love. It is no longer enough if His will be 
done, for the question now presents itself, how it is done. 
We now endeavor to obey, as the angels who are near 
Him obey. And this desire we express by the words, 

" Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also upon earth.'''' 

It remains for us to see clearly, that He is All in All ; 
to listen to the voices within and around us, while they 
proclaim his greatness and our nothingness without him. 
This is the central truth of all truth. Then are all our 
truths and knowledges filled with life, when they bear wit- 
ness to this, the greatest truth of all truth. Then we glad- 
ly look to Him. We wish to live from Him, and not to live 
from ourselves ; our very dependence is our highest pleas- 
ure ; we seek to make it more and more perfect, and to 
feel it more and more ; and all the wish and all the hope 
of every day is expressed in the prayer, 



212 THE SABBATH. 

" Give us this day our daily bread." 

And now what more remains? Only that our heart 
should be made wholly alive ; that all our affections should 
be vivified with genuine life. So far as they turn to the 
Lord and to the neighbor, they live. So far as they are 
tainted with self-love, they are dead. Nor are they wholly 
delivered from the bondage of this death, and filled to the 
brim with the life of heaven, until we can, with the whole 
heart, ask of Omnipotence to deal with us even as we deal 
with our neighbor. For self has learned its hard lesson 
well : it is no longer an enemy, but a friend ; no longer a 
ruler, but a servant ; when, in the full comprehension of 
those awful words, we can say to God, 

" Forgive us our debts, even as we forgive our debtors." 

And now we have reached the consummation to which 
our Father has been laboring to lead us. The Sabbath of 
the soul has come. And how have we been brought hith- 
er ? Always, through temptations ; at every step, through 
temptations. Only by meeting and resisting them ; only by 
learning through them what the evil within us was ; only 
by overcoming them, and so putting that evil away, have 
we been delivered by the Lord from evil. Hereafter that 
deliverance will go on, perfecting itself by an unending ap- 
proach to the perfection of the Infinite ; but while the end 
is the same, the work is henceforward very different ; it 
will not go on hereafter through temptations, for they have 
done all they could do. They are no longer necessary, for 
our obedience is complete and the kingdom is the Lord's. 
All the strength of our souls is from him, and his is the 
Power ; we know it, we praise him and bless him for it, 
and we give to him the glory. Henceforth — in the clos- 
ing words of this prayer — we are delivered from evil with- 



THE SABBATH. 213 

out being led into temptation, because the kingdom, the 
power, and the glory are the Lord's. 

They who have come thus far, have come through labor 
and through sorrow ; through painful conflict and deep 
grief; through resistance where resistance seemed impossi- 
ble ; through victory in temptations which allied themselves, 
with all things base and bad in them, and put on all their 
strength; through a straight and narrow path have they 
come to the gate of heaven. It opens before them ; and 
they find within one unbroken, one unclouded Sabbath ; 
and all the active usefulness which fills their life for ever- 
more, and all their perfect peace, are but an eternal ex- 
pression of the prayer which describes at once the only 
wish and all the happiness of heaven, — 

" Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the 
Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory., for ever. Amen." 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 



All men have some sense of right and wrong. It may 
be clear or clouded ; accurate or erroneous ; feeble and dis- 
regarded, or powerful and speaking with authority ; but in 
every mind not altogether imbecile and fatuous, there is 
some perception of a distinction between things which 
should be done, and other things which should not be 
done. 

This fact presents itself to every one who investigates 
human nature. And in the earliest fragments of philoso- 
phy which have come to us from the distant past, we see 
traces of an inquiry into the origin of this distinction, and 
the authority of duty. Aristotle — the first philosopher 
after Alexander had conquered Asia, and the limited, de- 
fining, and scientific mind of the West had begun to pre- 
vail over the boundless, undefining, and unscientific mind of 
the East — devotes a very powerful and influential work 
to this and to collateral topics. Since then, it has ever held 
its place among the most important subjects for philo- 
sophical investigation. No school, no sect, no philosophy, 
and no religion has deemed itself complete, until it has pro- 
pounded its theory of morals. Nor can it be denied that 
moral philosophy, which seeks as its central, if not its sin- 
gle purpose, to offer a solution of this problem, has ever 
19 



218 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

occupied among intellectual pursuits or labors a position, 
equal in its dignity and conceded worth to its intrinsic 
value. 

That so many have endeavored to answer this question, 
proves, perhaps, that no answer has been generally accepted. 
And a further proof that no principles leading directly to 
one distinct and positive answer have been discovered 
by thinking men generally, may be found in the num- 
ber and the diversity, as well as variety, of the theories 
of duty. 

But many, various, and diverse as these answers are, all 
of them may be resolved into three, or compounds or de- 
rivatives of these three. One of them answers the inquiry, 
What is duty, and why should duty be done ? by saying 
that it is the will of God. A second declares that the moral 
sense suggests and demands the doing of duty. A third 
asserts that reason and experience tell men that the dis- 
charge of duty is the most expedient thing, and the most 
useful to one's self, that any man can do. 

All of these answers are true ; or rather, all of them 
contain truth ; but no one of them contains the whole truth, 
or offers a key to the whole truth. Nor can we acquire 
this by accepting all, and putting them together in such wise 
as to constitute one answer. For this also has been done. 
There is a theory which declares that the will of God origi- 
nates right and wrong, and commands that what is right 
should be done, and what is wrong forborne ; and then im- 
plants in human nature a moral sense which reveals this 
distinction, and disposes us to obey this command ; and 
lastly, so provides all the accessories, circumstances, and 
results of life and conduct, as to make the discharge of 
duty and the avoidance of wrong the most profitable and 
expedient thing which a self-seeking person can do. 

By bringing all these answers thus into one, we accom- 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 219 

plish much ; we go nearer to the truth ; we get more of the 
truth. But we can hardly be said to be as yet even upon 
the track of the whole truth ; we are not yet in the way to 
find the central truth which underlies all of these, and 
gives to them whatever value they have, and harmonizes 
them all into an actual unity, and not into a merely com- 
posite and logical combination. 

There is, however, such a truth. There is an answer to 
this question, distinctly different from those which have 
been given ; deeper than they, and of more value and sig- 
nificance. This final solution of a vexed and difficult prob- 
lem I shall endeavor to give as well as I can at this time 
and in this way ; and it is an answer and solution which 
I derive from a new system of universal truth now given 
to the world. 

Although this answer, or solution, or theory, is distinctly 
new, and different from all that have been given, it has 
been, in some measure, implied in all of them, so far as they 
contained any truth. And in all the consequences derived 
from them, and all the structures of thought built upon them, 
there it was ; for it has always been the veiled and hidden 
origin, the concealed fountain, of all the truth and all the 
truths which have ever been uttered on this subject. At 
times the veil has been almost lifted, the fountain almost 
risen in beauty and glory to the upper air, when wise and 
good men have sought with pious and earnest endeavor to 
discover the foundations of duty. But this truth could not 
be seen with any clearness, until the laws of creation and 
existence were disclosed, and God could be seen in his 
true relation to man, and man in his true relation to God ; 
therefore, not until the present age. 

Even now, the clouds which have gathered in a long 
night pass so slowly away, and cumber so sadly with their 
lingering gloom the slowly rising sun, that the truth, even 



220 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

if it could be wholly told, would shine into a darkness that 
would comprehend it most imperfectly, if at all. The en- 
deavor, however, will be made, to see and to exhibit some 
portion of this truth. 

Duty is that conduct which is due to God. In other 
words, duty is the debt which man owes to his Maker. 
And if we would inquire into the origin, the extent, or the 
obligation of this debt, we must, at the outset, make some 
inquiry into the relations between God and man. If we 
have any idea whatever of God, that idea must include his 
omnipotence. He is then the king and ruler of man de 
facto, and this gives him some right to impose his laws on 
us. If we go on and say that infinite love and infinite wis- 
dom are, in him, united with infinite power, this would at 
once complete his right, and lay us under all the obligation 
to obedience which could grow out of reason and prudence. 
For from the love and wisdom and power of God conjoined 
must flow precisely those rules which are best adapted to 
promote our happiness. 

Farther than this we cannot go, unless we can do more 
than acknowledge the fact of the creation of the world by 
an Infinite Being who has been its lawgiver since its crea- 
tion. In other words, not unless we can learn something of 
the form and manner of creation ; something of the laws by 
which the putting forth of infinite power was and is regu- 
lated in the creation and preservation of the universe ; 
something of the end which God had in view in originally 
making, and now has in governing mankind, and of the 
means which he employs to attain this end. 

Even an inquiry into these dark questions may seem 
presumptuous ; and if made with the purpose or the hope of 
bringing all this truth within the grasp of science, or of ex- 
hausting these infinite questions, it would be but a renewal 
— and with an equal presumption — of the old Titan strife 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 221 

to scale the heavens. But if in simple and honest humil- 
ity we seek only to know so much of the truth as shall put 
us in the right way, so that, if with further endeavor we 
make a further progress, it shall be upward ; and if, as one 
of the results and influences from the truth we may thus 
learn, we would know more clearly the cause of duty, that 
its guidance might be plainer and its obligations stronger, 
so that we might better pay our debt to God and to man, — 
assuredly this were not presumptuous, nor an effort from 
which reason should banish all hope of success. 

Let us begin with asking whether, as all creation must 
have been made by God, it is rational to believe that he 
called the universe into being from mere nothingness ; or 
that this universe could thereafter have an existence with- 
out his further action. The mind revolts somewhat at both 
branches of this proposition. It is a maxim, not merely 
of philosophy, but of instinctive common sense, that out of 
nothing nothing comes ; or that, if there be no material or 
no substance ready for the operator, there can be no opera- 
tion and no creation. We may then say, that it is more 
probable that God created, first, by an emanation from him- 
self, that (be it mere force, as one theory would make it, or 
something more than force) which might by successive 
changes and derivations supply material for the proposed 
forms into which life should flow. Afterwards would these 
forms be constructed ; by what creative or plastic power 
acting upon this primal substance of creation, we do not 
now pause to say. But in some way these forms were con- 
structed, and filled with life from Him, and all so arranged 
and provided that there might live beings made in the im- 
age and likeness of God, and that around them there might 
be a universe, which, in its adaptation to their organization 
and to their qualities and faculties, should possess the power 
of affecting their senses, of supplying their wants, and de- 
19* 



222 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

veloping their activities of body and of soul, in the manner 
in which this world performs those functions. 

This idea of creation, although very indefinite, may still 
help us when we come, in the next place, to consider the 
preservation of a universe thus created. For it may lead 
us towards the conclusion, that the act of creation and the 
act of preservation may be one and the same thing ; or, in 
other words, that the preservation of the universe is a per- 
petual creation of it, because the continuance in existence 
of all things depends upon the continual putting forth of 
creative power. 

It is true that the mind is necessarily oppressed by the 
endeavor to conceive of the act of creation. Only by pa- 
tient and practised effort can we acquire the power of hold- 
ing such a subject in that distinct and steady contemplation 
from which alone can result ideas having any, even the 
least, clearness or definiteness. Nor would this topic have 
been now presented at all, but from the necessity of showing 
the unity of God's laws, from their first and most universal 
operation to the last and lowest details. For, if the theory of 
morals which we shall endeavor to present has any reality, 
it places the obligation of duty upon the same foundation on 
which rest creation, the universe, and providence. 

Let us, then, go from the creation and sustenance of the 
world to that of man. For this, as was long ago said, is 
but going from the creation of one world to that of an- 
other. 

We shall assume here, and for the purposes of this 
inquiry, some truths which, as separate topics of thought, 
might be well worth all the study that could be given to 
them. Thus we say that man lives after death ; not by a 
resurrection at the last day, but by his own resurrection 
at his own last day, or immediately after death ; all who 
have ever died being now alive. We also say, as a neces- 



THE FOUNDATION OP DUTY. 223 

sary implication from the truth just asserted, that there is 
a spiritual world, in which those who have left this world 
live ; and that they live there in a spiritual body. We 
say also, that this spiritual body is not put on at or after 
death, as a substitute for the natural body which is put off. 
But that while one lives in this world, he lives in a spiritual 
body, within the natural body ; and the effect of death is 
limited to the natural body, which it casts off from the 
spiritual body ; for this is what we call death. 

Man, therefore, is threefold. He has a soul, a spiritual 
body, and a natural body ; and each of these lives ; and 
these lives constitute one life, and are but one life, which 
is the life of the man. Because nothing can exist but in 
some form or method of being, the soul has its spiritual 
body which like itself is immortal ; and it is formed from 
those spiritual elements which belong to the spiritual world. 
This soul, or spiritual body, is further clothed upon by a 
natural body, at the beginning of man's existence ; and this 
is formed of the elements which belong to the natural world. 
As long as the soul lives, the spiritual body lives ; and as 
long as the spiritual body lives within the natural body, this 
natural body lives, and no longer. Each of these two is a 
body, one as much as the other, and no more. They differ 
only because each one is formed of the elements of the 
world to which it is appropriate, and in which it is at home. 
Man, at death, does not pass into the spiritual world, for he 
is in that world now ; but he passes out of the natural 
world, to return to it no more ; because he loses that instru- 
ment or organ which is made from this world and is adapt- 
ed to it, and which enables the man while he has it to make 
use of this world. 

These two bodies and these two worlds are consonant 
and adapted to each other. This is not, however, the re- 
sult of any such arbitrary or accidental law as the " pre- 



224 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

established harmony " of Leibnitz. That great man knew 
not how to explain the fact that mind operates upon matter 
whenever a man moves his arm, (although mind and mat- 
ter seem to be so essentially different that they cannot be 
supposed to come into contact or mutuality of action,) other- 
wise than by the theory that God, whose infinite wisdom 
foresaw every possible movement of every being who should 
ever live on earth, therefore preordained, by his infinite 
power, that, at any moment of the least exertion of the will 
of any living being, the appropriate muscle should move in 
an appropriate way ; but with no connection as of cause 
and effect, and no other relation between them than this 
mere consent and concurrence of time. 

Between these two worlds, and between these two 
bodies, there is indeed harmony, and a vast deal, more 
than harmony. There is an absolute correspondence. 
And if this were not perfect and perpetual, the outer 
world would perish, the outer body die. The Creator of the 
visible universe is also the Creator of that other universe, to 
us, at present, not visible. This inner universe is, as it were, 
the soul of the outer, forming it and preserving it, because 
it is the instrument by which the Creator forms and pre- 
serves it and fills it with life ; and that this may be so, these 
two worlds perfectly and always harmonize and correspond 
one with the other. Therefore, in one sense, this inner 
world is not even now invisible. For the outer world in 
which we now live is, first, the effect, then the embodiment, 
and, lastly, the mirror of the world within. 

And therefore it is that this outer world is beautiful ; and 
how inexhaustible, exuberant, and infinite is its beauty, and 
how living, suggestive, and significant! A rose-bud, just 
opening to meet the morning, and offer to the coming sun 
the gem it has made of the dew and filled with its sweet- 
est breath, is more than a mass of softly tinted leaves 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 225 

# 

gracefully convoluted and exhaling a pleasant fragrance. 
The motions of nature, or rather the one all-embracing, 
never-wearying, never-resting movement, to which every 
atom of the universe adds its contributory mite, — has this 
no significance, no voice ? 

Yesterday, while I was writing the preceding pages, was 
one of the fairest and finest days of our Autumn ; a season 
which is always so rich in delightful weather. And what 
an exhibition, what an excess of beauty, there was, from 
beginning to end. The morning, lovely as light, seemed to 
present to a spotless sky an earth as pure as itself, wrapped 
in a robe of the soft and tender but glowing light-mist 
of our Indian summer. Everything was living, and yet 
still. The tinted foliage moved softly, but ever moved ; the 
birds were busy, but quiet ; they were not wholly silent, 
but every one has noticed that their autumn song is, not 
melancholy, but softer than their spring music, and with- 
out its jubilant exultation. To the retired spot where I 
wrote, and from which I looked out upon all this surpassing 
beauty, the sounds even of human activity, — the last to 
lose their tone of effort and conflict, — even they came sub- 
dued into sweetness and harmony. And so the gentle, 
mighty movement went on, as the earth rolled forwards 
through its day's path ; and as the hour of universal rest 
came on, and the great shadow of the earth rose distinctly 
outlined on the eastern sky, the very earth itself seemed to 
lie down to slumber in the pale light of the watching moon, 
that it might be strong and fresh when morning came, to live 
another day under the eye of its Lord and Master. The 
day came and went, rose and sank away, over rocks and an- 
imals and men. And the men to whom it was only so many 
hours more for comfortable labor, or, yet worse, for pleas- 
ant idleness, — were they, in this respect, much above the 
lower animals, or even the rocks, upon whom this overflow- 



226 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

ing beauty was poured out? It will not always be so. 
The mind of man will grow and brighten, and his life be vivid 
and productive of all good, and Nature will present a cup of 
pure enjoyment to every lip, at every hour, when it is 
known that all her movements, and all her beauty and fra- 
grance, and all her laws and forces, are but the forms and 
expressions of an inner life, of an inner world, of spiritual 
movement and beauty and force and law. Then, the princi- 
ples by which whatever is without may be interpreted, and 
what is within recognized, shall be the lessons of all child- 
hood, and the common thought of the world's understanding. 
Far, very far in a remote future, this day may lie ; but 
there it must be, now only possible, but hereafter to be ac- 
tual, or that Providence must fail which cannot fail. Then 
will nature be as it is now, the exponent and the instrument 
of the spirit- world ; but then it will not be what it is now, — 
an impenetrable veil between that world and this its embod- 
iment. 



The natural body is, by itself, just as much alive as the 
soul ; and the soul, by itself, just as much dead as the body. 
Nothing could be more opposed than this to the common 
opinions of mankind, and indeed to what is now its common 
sense ; for this, in its present condition, judges only by sense. 
Every one says the body is dead of itself ; but the breath 
of life, or the soul, is breathed into it, and it lives ; and pres- 
ently this living soul is withdrawn, and goes on its way to 
live for ever, and the body is as dead as any other portion 
of the matter of this dead earth. All this is true, and per- 
fectly true ; but it is not the whole truth. For it omits the 
great fact, that, precisely as the body lives only from the 
living soul within it, so the soul lives only so long as life 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 227 

flows into it. We have said that there are two bodies, one 
spiritual and the other natural ; both are created ; and 
nothing that is created has life in it of its own. Life be- 
longs only and essentially to God ; but it can be imparted 
by him to whatever forms he creates to receive it. Both 
human bodies are such forms. The natural body is made 
for a temporary duration, and for purposes which are soon 
exhausted. The spiritual body for eternal duration, and for 
the clothing and instrument of a living soul, and for pur- 
poses which will be developed in an eternal series. There- 
fore life is breathed into the natural body during a time 
only, and then is withdrawn, and the body dies : and it 
continues to be breathed for ever into the soul, and through 
that soul into the inner body, and therefore that soul, in its 
spiritual body, never dies. But the manner of the living, 
and the law of the living, of both these bodies, or of the soul 
and the body, are absolutely the same. Indeed, the man- 
ner of their living may be stated thus. Life is breathed 
into or imparted to the soul, and this lives ; and through 
the soul it flows into the spiritual body, and this lives ; and 
through, the soul and through the spiritual body, it flows 
into the natural body, and this lives. But when the living 
spiritual body leaves this outer body, the outer body dies ; 
and if the imparted life should cease to flow into the soul, 
or through the soul into the spiritual body, that soul, or that 
body, would die in the same way. 

Upon two truths rests the whole science of pneumatology, 
or rather of life. One of these has just been stated. It is, 
that there is no life but the life of God, either in him or de- 
rived from him. And therefore nothing lives but God, and 
that which God has made a form or vessel receptive of life, 
and to which he has then imparted life from himself. 
The other truth is, that this was not a gift of life at the be- 
ginning, to continue until the appointed end in the case of the 



228 THE FOUNDATION OP DUTY. 

natural body, and to continue without end in the spiritual 
body. This is no more possible, than that we should cut off 
a portion of the light flowing from the sun, and have it still 
with us as light. Life is not given only at the beginning, 
but is always given. There was never a creation, either of 
the whole universe or of anything in it, or of any living 
being which it contains, or of any material thing in it, 
which creation was a completed and accomplished work, 
that was done and finished, and might thereafter be subject 
to supervision, assistance, or punishment, but which con- 
tinues to live or to exist because it was so made. It is a 
universal truth, equally and perfectly applicable to every 
stone or straw, to every sun or planet, to every spirit, angel, 
or archangel, that -it or he exists or lives at this moment by 
reason of the exertion of creative power at this moment. 
And there is absolutely no difference between the creative 
power and the preserving power, because preservation is 
nothing else than continued creation. 

It must needs be difficult for us to understand that God 
works in this way, because we work so differently. What- 
ever we make will continue to exist, and perhaps to work, 
for a longer or a shorter time, after we leave it. But this 
is because we surrender our fabric to the known and un- 
known powers of nature. Gravitation, elasticity, cohesion, 
friction, heat, light, all that is now comprehended within 
electricity, and innumerable other imponderable forces, — or 
the one Force that takes all these forms, — are constantly 
maintained in full vigor by a power which we are almost 
as unable to measure or to conceive, as we are to put it 
forth. 

It may be also very difficult to comprehend and accept 
this principle, because it is very difficult to disencumber our 
thoughts from the influence of time. We suppose that Kant, 
following in the footsteps of Plato, has demonstrated that 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 229 

space and time are only laws of thought or modes of apper- 
ception. Indeed, if they are more than these, they are en- 
tities, or independent realities ; and it requires but little 
power of analysis to perceive that this is impossible. We 
certainly shall not attempt to exhibit here the rationale 
of this profound problem of metaphysics. But we would 
suggest, what may be sufficiently obvious, that neither space 
nor time can affect the infinite and eternal ; and therefore, 
when we endeavor to investigate and comprehend the 
works of the infinite and eternal, we should not carry with 
us either of these limitations. In other words, we should 
endeavor, in good faith, to apprehend the eternal Present, 
and the universal Presence of the Godhead, and make them 
so far as we may the basis of our reasonings concerning 
His operations. One very simple and obvious result of 
this principle, needing no metaphysics and presenting little 
difficulty, is the truth that every man who is not self-created 
or chance-created, that is, every one who lives by the will 
and by the work of God, lives at each moment by the life 
and from the life which at that moment flows into him from 
God. The life of every man is therefore a portion of the 
life of God, not severed from him, but always His life, flow- 
ing from him into the man ; and this man is in the first 
place so formed within and without, and this life flowing 
into him is in the next place so adjusted and prepared, that 
it becomes in the man his own personal life. 

It follows that all this life is God's life ; and that every 
man who lives, receives (not has received) of His life from 
Him, and therefore lives. But how can we maintain this 
doctrine, and nevertheless be sure that personal and inde- 
pendent individuality is preserved ? If we are penetrated 
with the conviction that there can be but one life, and that 
this life is God's, must we not sacrifice to it all belief in the 
man's independent personality ? One erroneous system of 
20 



230 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

thought has accepted this necessity, and abandoned this in- 
dividuality. Led by various arguments of weight to con- 
clude that there cannot be a God and also another being 
who lives independently of him, although created by him, 
it asserts that God is all, and then, as a necessary inference 
from its premises, that all is God ; and finally, that only 
this all is God. All things of the universe are, in this 
view, parts of God ; without any one of them he would be 
less, and without any of them he would not exist. But 
while, by this doctrine, human individuality is, if not sacri- 
ficed, very imperfectly preserved, nothing is gained for the 
personality of God, for that certainly is wholly lost. Hence 
pantheism is usually considered a form of infidelity. For 
the common reason of mankind assures them, that, if God is 
not a person possessing his own existence in distinct indi- 
viduality, he is nothing but a metaphysical dream, or a mere 
possibility of the imagination. But what we maintain is, 
not only that God possesses distinct personality, but that 
he alone possesses original personality ; and that it is the 
perpetual communication of his own life which keeps in ex- 
istence each and every man. But do we not now invert 
the former error, and sacrifice the personality of man to the 
personality of God ? 

The answer to this it may be difficult to state, or to ap- 
prehend ; for it is perfectly new. So far as we have any 
knowledge of the past or present thought of the world, it 
does not contain the truth upon which the solution of this 
problem rests. And yet it constitutes a prominent text in 
the Bible, and in its oldest part ; and has thus stood among 
men longer probably than any other truth or principle or 
theory which has any relation to the constitution of man. 
We refer to the declaration of God in the first chapter 
of Genesis, — " Let us make man in our image and after 
our likeness." 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 231 

God is a Person. He is one Person, one God, possess- 
ing his own infinitely distinct personality. He has infinitely, 
or he is, Love, Wisdom, and Power. He has also, or he 
is, perfect and infinite blessedness ; and this latter attribute 
springs from the former ; that is, his blessedness springs 
from the activity of the elements of the Divine Nature ; or 
from the putting forth of his Power in doing the work of his 
Love, according to the direction of his Wisdom. And as the 
essence of all of this is Love, so we may say that his bless- 
edness springs from the infinite gratification of his Love, by 
the perpetual exertion of his wisdom and his power, in 
creating them who may also be blessed. Our next propo- 
sition is this : Because his infinite and perfect blessedness in- 
cludes all that is possible or conceivable of happiness, if his 
Love seeks to make them who may be happy, it must seek 
to make them to whom he may impart of his own blessed- 
ness ; for outside of this there is no happiness whatever. 
He does not seek to impart to men all of this, for that 
would require that he should impart to them all the infinite 
causes of his own blessedness ; and this is impossible, be- 
cause it would make them Gods ; but of it ; more or less of 
it ; and that measure or portion of it which, however small 
it may be in its beginning, shall yet have within it the 
power of development and improvement, so that it may 
grow through eternity towards its infinite fulness and per- 
fection in Him. 

If, then, he would impart his own blessedness, or any por- 
tion of it, he must impart some portion of those elements or 
causes from which his blessedness springs ; and these are 
His love, his wisdom, and his power ; and they must be 
given all from himself, or from his own, because no others 
are existent. Therefore He creates man with a will, which 
of itself neither loves nor hates, but into which His divine 
love may flow, and therein become man's affection and feel- 



232 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

ing ; and with an understanding which has not of itself the 
power of thought, but into which His divine wisdom may 
flow, and become man's thought and intelligence. But this 
is not all. As the blessedness of God springs not from the 
possession of love and wisdom, but from their exertion and 
exercise, so the gifts of a love like his own and a wisdom 
like his own, would be wholly ineffectual, if a power, also 
like his own, were not also given. 

In other words, God is infinitely happy, because that 
which he perpetually desires, his wisdom informs him how 
to do, and his power enables him to do. Therefore the gifts 
of love and wisdom to man are accompanied by a portion of 
this same power, in order that they may have the same effect. 
This power is the power which a perfectly distinct, indepen- 
dent, and individual person possesses, of acting of himself and 
at his own will and pleasure. This power is the only foun- 
dation of the Divine blessedness ; and the only possible foun- 
dation of all happiness ; and this is precisely the power 
that is given to men, to become in them the foundation of 
their happiness, which is necessarily God's own happiness 
imparted to man as far as that may be, whether this be much 
or little. As this implies and requires in God an infinite di- 
vine personality, so it implies and requires in man a finite but 
most real personality. Therefore every man, although living 
only by perpetual influx from the Lord, has the power of 
living absolutely as of himself, because this is a part of the 
very influent life which gives him life ; and it is a necessary 
part, because without this the residue would be useless and 
inoperative. All that flows into him is from God ; all of it 
is from and of the Divine life ; all the elements of the Divine 
life are in it ; and among them this great and most essen- 
tial element, personality, and the power of independent per- 
sonal activity. This great element, which is the basis of 
the rest in God, does not stay behind the rest, but flows in 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 233 

with them, and becomes in man the basis and foundation of 
his thought, action, affection, and happiness. 

We have said that this personality, or power of acting as 
of one's self, is absolutely essential to all happiness. But a 
profound conviction that all our life and power are of God, 
is equally essential to a just understanding of our relation 
to God, and a rightful use of the gift of life. And how 
shall we reconcile two things apparently so antagonistic ? 
Most men, in their intense assertion of their own freedom, 
cast off altogether — in fact, although it may not be in 
words, or in consciousness — all reference to God's power. 
"While some, seeing only that power, recognize no other, 
and become fatalists. They know not how to acknowledge 
God's omnipotence and perpetual oversight, and yet assert 
man's freedom. The solution of the problem lies in the 
reconciling truth, that, as God himself is perfectly free, this 
freedom also must be imparted to us, if we are made in his 
image and likeness. It is therefore one of the commands of 
God's almightiness, that man should be free. And this 
great truth, which has been given to a church that shall not 
perish, will itself never die out from among men. In times 
to come it will receive new illustration, and grow in clear- 
ness and in strength, and in acceptation among men, until 
at length faith in God will no longer be thought to require 
the sacrifice of human freedom, nor the assertion of that 
freedom lead a single step towards the denial of God. 
The belief and acknowledgment that we live only from God, 
and the consciousness that we live as of ourselves, will grow 
beside each other, and be one among men, as they have 
grown together as one from eternity in heaven. He that 
has ascended highest there, and drawn nearest to the Infi- 
nitely High, knows best, and sees with a clearness inexpres- 
sible and inconceivable by us, that at every minutest moment 
his life is the imparted life of God ; and yet feels with an 
20* 



234 THE FOUNDATION OP DUTY. 

intensity beyond our imagination, personality, freedom, and 
self-hood, all of which are the gifts of God. And thus, as 
he was created originally, so is he continually created and 
builded up more and more into the image and after the 
likeness of God. 



Let us now pause, and remember that our general pur- 
pose is to find the foundation of duty ; and that for this 
purpose, we have seen that man lives only from God, but 
that this life is imparted in such a way as to enable man to 
live as if it were his own, or, in other words, as of himself. 
And that the end for which man is in this way endowed 
with life is that he may receive and partake of the Divine 
happiness, in- a measure which may expand and increase 
for ever. And our next inquiry must be, how this life of 
God in man may become promotive of the purpose for 
which it is given. 

We must remember, that when the Infinite and Almighty 
bows the heavens and comes down to us, — to us who could 
not live an instant after one single sight or thought of Him 
as he is in his own infinity, — he clothes himself for our 
apprehension in truths and forms of thought, not false to his 
own, but, however immeasurably beneath him, yet corre- 
sponding to his own, and presenting him to us truly, al- 
though modified so as to be apprehensible by us. This we 
must remember, that we may not be startled when we are 
told that we can partake of the happiness of God, only on 
condition that we live as God lives. Yes, even as God 
lives ; for from his life of infinite action and infinite use 
springs his infinite blessedness. And from our action and 
our usefulness, whatever they may be, must spring our hap- 
piness, if any we are to have. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 235 

Again, let us remember, that, as there is but one life, and 
that is God's own life, whatever be the form it puts on 
in those to whom it is given ; and but one power, and that 
is God's power, whether it becomes in recipient forms 
the strength of man or of angel, the moving and heaving 
forces of physical nature, or the living energy in the weed 
by which it ripens its seed that the little bird who feeds 
upon it may not perish ; so there is but one happiness; the 
happiness of God, which, coming from him, fills his grate- 
ful creation. This let us remember, and then we shall be 
ready to hear, that, in giving us rules for our conduct, 
whether they be his commandments, or in whatever other 
form the laws of duty, he gives us the greatest blessing 
which infinite wisdom can conceive or infinite power im- 
part ; for he gives to us instruction as to the manner and 
method of his own life ; and therefore he gives us the way 
and the means of living as he lives, and thereby becoming 
happy with his happiness. 

This is true, because all the genuine laws of duty, in what- 
ever revelation or whatever form they come or have ex- 
isted, in whatever guise they may be suggested by a true 
conscience to him who loves the right, and most of all, in 
the ten commandments, in which they are summed up, all 
these laws of duty are laws of divine order. I do not mean 
by this laws which God impresses upon his universe to pre- 
serve its order, or laws by obedience to which man may 
live in an order, which God requires and loves ; but laws, 
or truths, by which the divine order of God's own life is 
regulated. They constitute a description. of God's own life. 
Let me, by way of illustration, speak thus ; if a man were 
very happy, and an erring and suffering brother came to 
him and said, " How is it that you are so happy, when I am 
so miserable?" we can understand what the happy man 
means when he replies, " It is because I live in this way or 



236 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

that way, and you live so differently ; now listen to me, and 
I will tell you how I live, that you may live in the same 
way, and be happy also." God is doing to man this very 
thing. He comes, as a man might come to a suffering and 
erring son, and tells him, for his guidance and relief, the story 
of his own life. It takes the shape of the commandments, 
or of the laws of God, or of the laws of duty ; for these are 
one. Therefore are they full of infinite meaning. They 
are gifts from the infinitely blessed, to us the infinitely low. 
They are brought down and put within our reach, and as 
it were laid at our feet, as lamps for the path we should 
tread. They are thus brought down, that they may lift up 
the lowest ; and therefore they are brought down where the 
lowest may find them, and take them to himself. But they 
do not cease for this to be divine; nor are they for this 
the less divine ; nor is there in them a little part of the di- 
vine life cut off from the rest for man's use ; but the whole 
of that divine life in all its infinite fulness. Let the hum- 
blest and most self-abased sufferer begin, and obey in its 
simplest form one of the laws of God, and at that moment 
he begins to rise ; and as he obeys more, and all, and this 
habitually and lovingly, he rises always more and more, 
and these laws rise with him. Always they will tell him 
his duty, for always they will be the laws of God's own life. 
We may imagine an archangel, highest among the blessed, 
loving these laws as we cannot love anything, seeing in them 
a wisdom which would blind us with excess of light, and 
guarding in his heart of hearts the certainty that these 
laws came forth from the bosom of God, bearing his life 
with them ; and that in their re-ascent they bear upwards 
with them all who live by them. 

Some of the steps of this ascending meaning, this grow- 
ing into heavenly wisdom, of God's commandments, are 
now made visible to us. Swedenborg has told us some of 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 237 

them very plainly ; and the principles of the science of cor- 
respondence revealed by him enabled us to go still farther. 
Presently, I will endeavor to illustrate this meaning by ex- 
amples. Now I would only say, that there is and must be 
a kindred capacity of growth and elevation in every law of 
duty, whatsoever its origin or form or requirement. Obey 
it until it becomes a part of your life, and it will present it- 
self to you anew with a higher meaning. Obey that also, 
and again it will rise and bear you upwards ; and this again 
and again, with a never-ending ascent, because it came from 
and returns to the Highest. 

We have now reached a point where I may state, in the 
most general form, what I propose to illustrate as the Foun- 
dation of Duty. It is the fact, that all laws of order are 
revelations of the order of God's own life ; given to us that 
we may live in like manner as far as possible, and, in a de- 
gree which shall equal that in which we so live, partake of 
the happiness which is God's own happiness, and the effect 
and fruit of the life so revealed and described to us. 

It may seem familiar and irreverent to speak of God's 
own life, and of the manner of it, as if it were a thing which 
we could possibly understand, or even imitate. Certainly 
we cannot understand it fully as it is in him. " No man 
has seen his face and lived." But as we say all truths are 
his thoughts, not meaning that he thinks just in the way in 
which we think, but only that, if he be a person who has 
built up our personality in his own image and likeness, 
there must be that in him which is thought in us ; and 
these his thoughts, when they come down to us, are truths. 
So, in a like manner, we say he is a person who creates, 
and preserves and governs, and therefore lives, and there- 
fore must have a manner of living. And then we say that 
the description of this manner of living, when it is brought 
down to us, takes the shape of the moral and religious laws 



238 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

of life which he gives. However difficult it may be to il- 
lustrate this by example, within a brief space, I can hardly 
hope to be intelligible otherwise, and will take one or two of 
the plainest and most general instances. 

Thus, one of these laws is, " Thou shalt not kill." This 
is addressed to the lowest possible degree or condition of 
humanity ; it is addressed to those who desire and intend 
to kill; and to meet and help this wretched state of man, 
it comes down to it, and appears as nothing more than a 
prohibition against murder. But let this law be believed 
and obeyed, in almost any degree, and it soon rises. From 
a prohibition of the act of slaying, it becomes a command 
against all thoughts and feelings which lead to slaying ; and 
so it ascends and enlarges, until it brings within its scope 
all malignity, all hatred, all jealousy, all envy. And if these 
also are resisted and overcome, and removed from the life 
and the heart by the higher obedience which this law now 
claims, soon will its negative character disappear. As a 
command not to do, it has done its work ; and now it be- 
comes a command to do ; for it requires of us to cultivate 
that charity, and all those affections which are the opposites 
of the malignant passions it has subdued and expelled. 
And this for a twofold reason. One is, that if we do not 
fill the " empty house " from which the devils have depart- 
ed with better occupants, they will be sure to return ; 
another is, that unless we exercise and strengthen and cul- 
tivate into full fruitfulness these good affections, we shall 
suffer the good things in our neighbor, which we might in 
this way keep alive, to die. Then heavenly and angelic life 
begins, whether the man be here or higher ; and as this life 
advances and grows, so advances and rises this law ; always 
leading to a purer and warmer love of the neighbor, as 
obedience to it continually animates the will and enlightens 
the understanding, until this law is seen to contain and to 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 239 

express infinite love ; the very divine love of God himself; 
and his infinite and eternal communication of his own life. 
It is a ladder of which the foot rests upon the lowest plane 
on which sinful and suffering humanity can stand. It 
rests there, that the unhappy who dwell there may find 
it, and climb, if they will, for ever upward ; for its summit 
is lost in the brightest glories of heaven, and is still as- 
cending. 

In like manner, if we analyze the command, u Thou shalt 
not bear false witness," we shall find it addressed in form to 
him who had so far defaced in himself the image of his 
Maker, as to have no love for truth. But we should also 
find that there was within it a fulness of meaning, capable 
of progressive development, until it would be seen to lead 
to the denial of all falsehood, to a hatred of it, to a love of 
all truth, and to an endeavor to receive into our minds all 
that we can receive of infinite wisdom, and live in conform- 
ity with it. And what we have said of these two laws is 
trup, in some form and in some measure, of every truth 
which leads to good, or, in other words, of every law of 
duty. 

We cannot do the very same things which God does, 
nor any one of them. He has not described specifically 
what he does, that we may do it. But our conduct may 
be governed by motives and principles which are similar to 
those which govern his ; and we may do, under any circum- 
stances, precisely the same thing that the motives and prin- 
ciples of the divine conduct would lead to if they came 
down to those circumstances ; for by and through us they 
may come down to those circumstances. The laws of duty 
are given in order to bring our conduct at all times under 
those motives and principles ; and by obeying them, we may 
live as God lives, with that difference only which springs 
from the difference between the finite and the infinite, and 



240 THE FOUNDATION OP DUTY. 

between the circumstances under which we act, and those 
under which He acts. 



It may occur as a difficulty, that as the laws of duty are 
given to us, that by obedience to them we may lead the life 
of God in our degree and on our plane of being, so, if we 
do not obey them, we must either lead God's life in doing 
evil, or else there is a life within us which is not God's life. 
And it has already been asserted, that all the life in every 
man is God's own life derived from him, because there is 
no other life and no other source of life. 

But it was also said, that the constantly influent life from 
the Lord is constantly accompanied by, or rather always 
contains within it, that freedom which is one element of di- 
vine life, and is absolutely necessary to a distinct and real 
personality, either in God or in man. This freedom is not 
an appearance only, and is not given only in appearance ; 
for then man's personality would be an appearance only, 
and this is as real as heaven. "We may reason about this 
freedom indefinitely. And at the end, as at the beginning, 
one thing remains certain ; it is, that we know we are free. 
One may deny this in words, and be only foolish ; for he may 
suppose himself to believe that there is no human freedom, 
and only deceive himself. But if he really believes this, 
and acts accordingly, he is insane, and all men call him so, 
and must in common charity treat him and care for him as 
one insane ; for if they do not, he will perish. 

If our freedom is a reality, it must consist in one of two 
things. Either in the power of rejecting this influent life, 
or in the power of determining its form, effect, and opera- 
tion at our own pleasure. It cannot be the first, for that 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 241 

would only be death. It must, then, be the second. Such 
is the fact ; for every man has this power ; and nature is 
full of emblems and analogies which show us what it is. 
Thus the sun, which is the representative of God in nature, 
pours out its animating influence and heat and light, the 
same at all times and to all things. But the earth receives 
it, now in winter, now in summer, now in day, and now in 
night, accordingly as she turns herself towards the sun. 
And while the tree which receives this influent life into 
appropriate vessels ripens delicious fruit, and the rose ac- 
knowledges and seeks to repay the gift by its beauty and 
its fragrance, the plant by its side receives the same gifts, 
and uses them to ripen a deadly poison. And why and 
how is this ? The true answer tells us that this influent life 
is received into different vessels. There is a universal law 
embracing all creation, whether of mind or matter, which 
causes all things to receive whatever is given them into their 
own forms, and to give this life forth only as it is shaped and 
qualified by those forms. A fragment of the earliest phi- 
losophy tells us that " everything is received according to 
the form of the recipient." How well all know, that if we 
try to do good to any one, whether we do him any good, or 
what, or how much, depends on him. It is precisely so that 
the ivy ripens its poison and the vine its grape under the 
same law which causes the evil and the good, on whom the 
sun shines equally, — whether we mean the sun of the body 
or the sun of the spirit, — to ripen and give forth according 
to their own quality the fruits of sin or those of righteous- 
ness. 

There is, however, this difference. Dead forms have no 
freedom, and no power of choice or self-direction ; and 
merely animal forms have none which is guided by reason, 
or by a will which consults reason. Not so is it with men. 
They have the power, and cannot lose it, the responsibility, 
21 



242 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

and cannot escape it, of giving to this influent life, when it 
flows forth in action, form, effect, quality, and operation, at 
their own pleasure and by their own determination. 

At first this depends upon the individual nature of each 
man. And as we have all inherited the evils of a long 
ancestry, — that is, have inherited tendencies to those evils 
which they confirmed in themselves by indulgence and ex- 
ercise, — the influent life often comes forth in forms of evil. 
As soon as we do an evil thing, or yet earlier, as soon as 
we are conscious of a desire to do evil, there falls upon us 
the power and the necessity of choice. We may confirm 
all these dispositions to evil by act and indulgence ; and 
then this influent life becomes in its effects and manifesta- 
tions more and more perverted. Nor would it be possible 
for us to know or to suspect the quality of those tenden- 
cies, and use this knowledge to prevent the consummation 
of our ruin, if means for this end were not provided for us 
by the revelation of the laws of duty. They tell us what 
would otherwise be hidden in the darkness of an eternal 
midnight. They tell us what that life is, and what it does 
in its pure and perfect source, in order that by endeavoring 
to do so also this life may remain in us, and may do in us 
and through us what it does in the divine operation. We 
may confirm and multiply the tendencies to evil already 
existing within us ; and in so doing we shall live from our- 
selves, in the sense that we shall voluntarily indulge and 
strengthen those inclinations which spring from our own 
character and lead us to pervert the influent divine life. 
Or we may resist our own evils ; and as we resist and sub- 
due them and put them away, the opposite good as it is 
received from the Lord becomes implanted and enrooted 
within us, and gradually the inner forms of our wills and 
understandings are changed, and their tendency to pervert 
the influent love and wisdom passes away, and we can, as 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 243 

spontaneously as the vine ripens its grapes, lead a life 
which is correspondent to the divine life. Then are we 
like unto the angels of God ; or rather, then have we be- 
come his angels. 

The true foundation of duty is, therefore, we repeat, the 
great truth that man lives by receiving influent life from 
God ; that the laws of this life as it exists in Him are re- 
vealed to man, and adapted to his apprehension as the laws 
of duty ; that these are disclosed to his reason and to his 
conscience by the written word and otherwise ; that obedi- 
ence to these laws brings his life into conformity with the 
divine life in the way and degree that belong to the plane 
on which the man lives, whether this be high or low, or the 
highest ; and that this conformity opens him to the recep- 
tion of happiness from God in a corresponding degree. 

"We have called this truth one ; and it is a one, although 
composed of many elements. And it has always been, to 
some extent, implied or dimly shadowed forth by all con- 
siderations of the obligations of duty which approached the 
true relation of man and God. 

Thus, the principle that we live by the influent divine 
life has been among men from the beginning. In the older 
time, many were the theories and systems which were 
founded upon it. But because this truth was seen but im- 
perfectly and without its concomitants, it led to results 
which were not true, but in some minds became very false, 
and in some instances did the work of falsehood. Begin- 
ning, indeed, at the very earliest known philosophies or 
religions, and coming down to this day, the principle that 
human life is not self-originated, but is the influent life of a 
creator, has quite too often led to one of two bad results, 
and sometimes to both. One of these is fatalism ; the other 
is asceticism. 

The doctrine that human life is in its origin divine life 



244 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

which is perpetually given, bears the mind very strongly 
towards the conclusion, that every moment and every act 
of the body or the soul are controlled by an omniscient al- 
mightiness, and are therefore predetermined and unchange- 
able, unless this doctrine is accompanied by that other truth 
which tells us that personal freedom and individuality are 
given constantly with that life, or, to speak more accurately, 
are themselves essential and inseparable elements of that 
life. Nor could this reconciling truth be seen or under- 
stood, until it was known what was meant by man's being 
created in the image and likeness of God. For, as we 
have endeavored to explain that statement, all the elements 
of the divine nature, however lowered and accommodated to 
the plane of human nature, must be imparted to human na- 
ture, that it may image forth the divine. And one of these 
elements is the perfect freedom and absolute personality of 
God. But if both of these truths are accepted, the doc- 
trine that man lives from God, not only does not imply or 
suggest fatalism, but it involves, and it establishes, human 
freedom. 

The other error we have spoken of is asceticism. This 
doctrine sometimes wears a very lovely and attractive as- 
pect ; it has resisted the corruptions of sensuality and 
worldliness with majestic might, and has indeed been as 
the salt of a church to preserve it from utter decay ; and we 
have no wish to speak of it or to think of it as mere error. 
Perhaps we should rather regard it as a kind of accommo- 
dated truth, permitted to exist where purer and higher truth 
would be powerless and useless. Asceticism sacrifices self 
and sense and the world. It seeks the kingdom of God, not 
first, but only. It seeks this by suppressing and suffocat- 
ing all self-life, and waiting in stillness and quietude to 
receive what God shall give instead ; whence those who 
have held these doctrines are sometimes called Quietists, 



THE FOUNDATION OP DUTY. 245 

and sometimes Pietists, or by other names, which, if they 
have any significance, bear substantially the same meaning. 
There are perhaps things in the statements and doctrinals 
of all true religions which, taken by themselves, and sep- 
arated from all their accompaniments, might appear to favor 
asceticism. This may be true even of the New Jerusalem, 
but very far is the doctrine of this church, when viewed 
in its whole breadth, from any such tendency. Nothing is 
more certain, than that all its doctrines command us, not to 
slay and sacrifice, but to keep alive and cherish, the love of 
self and the love of the world and all our sensuous nature, 
and — to regenerate them ; and to do this as of ourselves, 
but with the knowledge and acknowledgment that the will 
and the power to do so are from the Lord alone. Then, 
what becomes of asceticism ? It passes away, and its place 
is filled with the most intense activity. For we know that 
the life of God, in himself, is one with the love of do- 
ing good ; that this love prompts him to build and sustain 
a universe of which the suns are more numerous than the 
atoms of earth-dust, and a heaven which is infinitely more 
than all the suns and earths below it. And then this love, 
as the divine life, visits and fills all of these, and yet seeks 
the little creature which our unaided eye cannot see, whose 
wide world is a spoonful of water, and gives it at every 
moment of its brief life all its proper activity and enjoy- 
ment. If we would co-operate with His influence in build- 
ing ourselves truly into the image and likeness of His life, 
every duty — although so humble that we must stoop to see 
it, and so little that it will escape us then if we do not look 
for it earnestly — takes at once the aspect of a work which 
God has given us to do, and a blessing, however it be now 
disguised, which he has given us to receive. Where, then, 
is the worthlessness of human life, or the littleness of human 
concerns ? Where, then, is he who will venture to sorrow 
21* 



246 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

because all surrounding opportunities are low and trivial ? 
Where, then, the mind and heart which do not fail in the 
endeavor to conceive or measure the value of even one 
moment, because each one may be given to duty, and 
through duty to God ? 

I would speak no ill of asceticism, for I have no dislike 
of it and no fear of it, and certainly no contempt for it. 
Let it come if it be needed, for there is a danger which it 
may help to avert, and an evil which it may rebuke. There 
are some indications of its approach, and if it will aid in re- 
sisting the growing worldliness of the times, if it will incite 
to a deeper and more vital piety, let it be welcome. It can- 
not make us too earnest or too devout as Christian men and 
women, nor can it make our piety too warm and fervent, if 
it does not disturb or cloud the higher truth which tells us 
that the appointed evidence and the best effect of a true 
piety is the active, cheerful, and religious performance of 
all those duties to all around us, be they never so humble, 
which belong to the way of life in which our Father bids 
us walk. 

If we regard our life as the life of God within us, formed 
indeed and brought out into results by virtue of that per- 
sonal individuality and freedom which is one element of 
that life ; if we believe that it retains in its inmost essence 
its original divinity, and is to be so shaped and operated by 
us in our freedom, that the external thus given to it may 
be correspondent to its internal ; not equal, because that 
was possible only for Christ ; but conformed and unopposed, 
for that is possible for all ; — then we must see that every 
moment of our daily life, supposing it all to be under God's 
providence, may be the means of bringing these two — 
this internal divine and this natural ultimate and external 
— into, or at least towards, conformity and correspondence. 
And, indeed, that it must be the means of doing either this 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 247 

or its opposite. Hence, a new value and worth are given 
to our commonest hourly duties. And from this point of 
view we may better comprehend a principle, or a doctrine 
which I suppose distinguishes this dispensation of the New 
Jerusalem from all former religions, and indeed from the 
whole natural and habitual tendency of mankind. For all 
religions have taught, or have been supposed to teach, 
that while we should do our ordinary and home duties faith- 
fully, yet when opportunities offer for great things, that is 
for great endeavors, great sacrifices, and remarkable self- 
devotion to some extraordinary good, these opportunities 
should be laid hold of, or indeed sought with enthusiasm ; 
and should be regarded as the means of great advancement 
in goodness, of large and sudden leaps upon a forward and 
an upward path. Not merely asceticism or pietism, but 
the common consent of mankind in all ages and among all 
races, has declared that they who separate themselves from 
common humanity, and with extreme abnegation and ob- 
livion of self devote themselves to the strenuous and per- 
petual performance of those painful or repulsive charities 
or uses which nearly all neglect, — these are the saints on 
earth, angels in disguise, who climb with great and rapid 
strides the steep ascent of the mountain of holiness. All 
this is changed, I may almost say, reversed, in the New 
Church. Here also it is taught that these uses should be 
performed, that these and all good works should be done ; 
and that those persons who feel themselves called upon by 
character, taste, peculiar fitness of powers and qualities, or 
by adaptedness of position, or by any command of circum- 
stances, — all these persons should go on and engage in this 
way of life, and continue in it as long as it seems best that 
they should. But that they are no better and no greater 
for doing their duty in this form than in any other. On 
the contrary, the New Church teaches, that the chief duty, 



248 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

the highest charity, the greatest opportunities for goodness, 
offer themselves to every man and every woman, every- 
where. We must remember that, if the end which God 
desires from our whole conduct be that this may conform 
to the inmost and essential tendencies of the life he im- 
parts to us, and if all the circumstances of our daily condi- 
tion are controlled by him to this end, then each little work 
of every minute, however common and dull or mean and 
trivial it may appear to us or others, is in very fact a 
mould which he has given, into which we may cast our out- 
ward life, that it may come forth a vessel perfectly fashioned 
into correspondence with the life which flows into it from 
him. And there is no need for zeal to fold its hands and 
say, I will wait until a work fit for me shall offer. Let 
the most zealous try perseveringly and in good faith to do 
these little hourly, daily duties as they should be done ; let 
him try to dethrone, as the ruling motive of industry, the 
wages which pay for it, whether they be money or honor 
or influence, or the pleasure of self-complacency. Let him 
try to forget himself, and how his work is to look and af- 
fect his reputation, and see in what he does only its utility 
to his neighbor ; or let him try to lose his sense of its ap- 
parent meanness, and resist the weariness which comes 
from the dull routine of labor ; let him try to fill each mo- 
ment with the cheerful alacrity and earnestness that will 
abide with us when we indeed know that every moment 
may take us one step nearer to our Father in heaven. Let 
him try this, to-day and to-morrow, and for many morrows, 
and he will not be likely to ask for anything which it is 
harder to do. No ; thankful indeed would all that is yet 
unregenerate within him be for the relief it would find in 
the opportunity to do some great thing, which would con- 
sole and sustain him with the sense of its greatness, and the 
greatness it would give him before God and man, and in 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 249 

his own self-appreciation. To oppose some general evil ; 
to be a reformer, and a zealot, and a leader of reform ; — 
gladly would he do this. But to wash seven times in Jor- 
dan ; every day in the week, in the common boundary, in 
the ever-flowing waters which bathe the holy land so that 
none who come from the rising sun can enter that land but 
through them, — no, he would rather return to his home 
and carry his uncleanness with him. 

However mean and small these duties may seem to us, 
each one of them that is well performed becomes the basis 
of an ever-rising and ever-growing structure. The life 
which is made our own in this world, is no other than the 
life which will become our own hereafter. One always in 
its origin and source, it retains there the form and quality 
impressed upon it here ; or rather we retain there all that 
determines its form and quality here. Whatever, by the 
power of discipline or habit or development, brings any part 
of our external nature into true correspondence and con- 
formity with the life within, in this way and so far unites 
that part of our external life to the life within, and does 
this for perpetuity. Thereafter, as we advance in the un- 
ending career of improvement which constitutes heaven, we 
shall find an external already provided on that point which 
inflowing divine life may fill and animate. Whatever plane 
of being we may reach, that external will have risen also, 
and will still be the ultimate but living and productive form 
of the same principle of life which filled it here. However 
vast, and now inconceivable, the good which that principle 
of life may accomplish in our highest ascent, it will still be 
in exact correspondence with the minute and humble duty 
performed here, and will be possible only because that duty 
was well performed. 

There is an anecdote in the biography of a celebrated 
singer of the last century, which may illustrate this. In his 



250 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

youth, after much instruction, he went to pass a year or 
more with one who was deemed the best master in Europe. 
His teacher gave him a sheet or two of exercises. The 
pupil sang them at sight ; but was directed to sing them 
again and practise them until he could sing them better. 
And this he did, again and again, and always with the same 
answer, and with instructions pointing out defects, until he 
grew very impatient, and asked, When shall I begin to 
sing the music I must sing as the business of my life ? And 
the answer ever was, Practise these exercises a little longer. 
When the pupil could bear it no more, the teacher said, After 
one month, you shall have something else. But persevere 
so long. And when the month was ended, and the young 
artist demanded a change in his instruction as the reward 
of his obedience, the answer was, You have learned all that 
any school can teach you ; go forth, equal to whatever shall 
be required of you, and take your place as the first singer 
in Europe. So will the harmonies of heaven present them- 
selves to him who has qualified himself for them by faith- 
ful diligence in the exercises which earth has offered. None 
but his Master may see the connection between these ex- 
ercises and the glorious work which they have prepared 
the pupil for. But He saw it. And by His wisdom and 
His love they were fitted to discipline the mind and heart 
into a fitness for uses, before whose transcendent majesty 
and beauty the poor enthusiasms of this world would faint 
and die. 

We have traced the laws of duty to their origin, and 
found in that origin the foundation of their obligation. More 
might be added ; more which would present this subject un- 
der yet another aspect, and offer yet stronger reasons why 
these laws should be obeyed. But it would lead us to con- 
sider a topic which in its elevation is too far above us, and 
in its extent too far beyond our powers, to permit even the 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 251 

endeavor to present it in a scientific form. And we allude 
to it only because it must not be left untouched. 

In several places in the Word, and particularly in the 
seventeenth chapter of John, are texts which indicate the 
desire of the Lord, that we may be one with him, even as 
he is one with the Father. 

Declarations of this kind have always been regarded 
with reverence. But they have seemed to involve only an 
emphatic and most solemn admonition to imitate him in his 
life and conduct. Figurative in their form, and impressive 
from their appeal to the imagination, they were not consid- 
ered as presenting a proposition which could be supposed 
to express an exact truth. This is a mistake. There is 
no proposition in the science of religion more definite or 
more certain than that which these words are intended to 
imply ; none approaching it in importance, and certainly 
no one which has so much right to be considered as com- 
prehending all the rest. 

The Lord Jesus Christ was born in this world, a son of 
the Virgin Mary. From her he inherited a humanity like 
our own. But within him dwelt the fulness of the God- 
head. The difference between him and us consists, not in 
the fact that Jehovah was his Father, for he is our Father 
also ; but in this fact, that He is the Father of each one of 
us, by and through some individual man, who by the plas- 
tic powers of his own nature gives form and quality to that 
life which being imparted through him becomes our life ; 
and consequently causes each one of us to have, at the 
outset, all those modifications, tendencies, and peculiarities 
which qualify this influent life ; and these may be modified, 
restrained, or in a measure suppressed, but never extirpated 
or wholly removed. 

From this difference it arises, that the Lord Jesus Christ, 
by victories over all the evil influences which found it pos- 



252 THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 

siblo to assault him through that inherited humanity, was 
able gradually to destroy all opposition, and all want of 
perfect conformity and concord between it and the divine 
within, until they became at length perfectly harmonious, 
perfectly conjoined, perfectly one, and this one perfectly, 
infinitely, and eternally divine. 

This result he proposes to us as the end which we should 
seek for ever to approach. Attain it we cannot. This 
was possible only for him. And it was possible for him, 
because there was nothing ineffaceably impressed upon his 
nature by the nature of an earthly father. It is otherwise 
with us. What we can do is to follow in the path in which 
he walked. We cannot go so far, but we can go in the 
same direction; and we cannot go in any other and ap- 
proach our Father and his Father. We may live some- 
what as he lived ; and the effort to do this will assimilate 
us to him, and our life to his life, and the result of our life 
to the result of his life, more and more for ever. 

This result in him was the making of his external na- 
ture equally divine with the indwelling Godhead, because 
the divinity within flowed into and perfectly filled the whole 
of his external nature and life. And this is what is meant 
by his glorification. 

The result in us may be perpetual improvement ; a con- 
stantly growing submission of the life which is shaped by 
our inherited tendencies to that which flows into us from 
the Lord. When this has gone so far that this inflowing 
life distinctly prevails, and comes forth in our life only mod- 
erated and limited by what belongs to us, but not pervert- 
ed, then are we, in the language of Scripture, born again. 
A new heart and a new life are ours. And this is what is 
meant by our regeneration. 

Then we shall be able to comprehend as we cannot now, 
what is meant by the texts above referred to. We shall 



THE FOUNDATION OF DUTY. 253 

then know that we are approaching a Unity with our Fa- 
ther ; even with the infinite Almightiness of heaven. And 
that this is wrought through a true conjunction with him. 
A conjunction which is not a confusion. For by this con- 
iunction the life received by us, and the life lived by us, or 
the life of God within us and our own life, may become as 
much one, as are the life of the soul and the life of the body 
in any most spontaneous act, which the hands perform with 
all their strength because the whole heart is in it. And 
this conjunction, while it thus harmonizes and combines into 
unbroken unity two elements once so antagonistic, pre- 
serves for ever, as its own indispensable foundation, and sus- 
tains in always growing strength and completeness, our own 
personal individuality and our own personal free agency. 

We are so far from this result ; it is so high and we so 
low, that it seems a vain word to speak of it ; a vain hope 
to aspire towards it ; a vain effort even to try to imagine it. 
But let us remember, that if the counsels of Infinite Wis- 
dom were conceived from eternity, there lies eternity before 
them wherein to accomplish all their work. 

If we would solve the problem, why the laws of duty are 
revealed, we can do it only as with reverent and earnest 
thought we ascend the stream towards the fountain. As we 
go upwards, we shall find that these laws flow forth from the 
love of God, because they are the expression of the life of 
God. And then we shall see that the best and the whole 
of earth, and all that the imagination can see in the bright 
expanse above it, or lying along the distant horizon of a 
far-reaching possibility, — all of these, though they may 
be truths and rational probabilities, are but as the minute 
seeds and imperceptible germs, in which lie gathered and 
concealed the great certainties of that unending future 
which begins with Duty. 

22 



DEATH AND LIFE 



DEATH AND LIFE 



By death is usually meant the termination of life, and 
therefore death cannot exist until there is a life which may 
cease to be. 

Why, then, do we say Death and Life ? Why give this 
priority to that which is necessarily the second, not the 
first ? Because, if, under one aspect, it is the end, under 
another it is the beginning. If in one sense, and under one 
relation, it is true that there can be no death until there 
has been life, in another sense, and under another relation, 
it is equally true that there can be no life until there has 
been death. 

As a religious truth, this has always been known and 
asserted with greater or less distinctness. Every profound 
system of religion has counted this truth among its bases. 
Many of the ancient myths endeavored to express it ; and 
our Lord, in the Gospel of John, emphatically declares it to 
be indicated and symbolized by that uprising of vegetable 
growth, upon which, as a necessary foundation, all animal 
being, directly or indirectly, depends for the possibility of 
being. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of 
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if 
it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 



22 



258 DEATH AND LIFE. 

There are not many things in which all the sects of 
Christianity agree, however otherwise divergent and dis- 
cordant. But there is certainly one. It is that Jesus 
Christ is the great exemplar for man. They may differ, 
and do so irreconcilably, as to the reason, the method, or 
the benefit of this example ; but the fact all admit. Indeed, 
it would be impossible even to profess Christianity, with- 
out acknowledging that which our Lord himself expressly 
and repeatedly asserts as the beginning and the end of his 
command and instruction ; that which shines through it all, 
giving to it order, coherence, and illustration ; that which is 
expressed in the words, " Follow me." A very frequent 
form in which this sentiment is uttered is in the require- 
ment that we should love our brethren even as he loves 
us. In John he says, "Abide in me and I in you. .... 

I am the vine, ye are the branches He that abideth 

in me, and I in him, bringeth forth much fruit If ye 

keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love 

This is my commandment, that ye love one another even 
as I have loved you." And, in the verse immediately fol- 
lowing, he adds, " Greater love hath no man than this ; 
that he lay down his life for his friends." 

It is then one of the commands of Christianity, that we 
should be ready to lay down our life for our friends ; and 
probably all would agree, that, among the elements of the 
perfect Christian character to which we should look and 
aspire, even if we can never completely attain to it, must 
be a willingness to lay down one's life for another, when 
there is a sufficient cause for the sacrifice. 

But how seldom is there such cause. In the first cen- 
turies, and occasionally since, when spasms of persecution 
have shaken the Christian Church and betrayed a deadly 
disease within it, there have been martyrs. Some, at least, 
of them, and we may hope many, were good men, who died 



DEATH AND LIFE. 259 

as Christian men, and because they were Christian men. 
And the pains of death were softened, and in some in- 
stances authentic history justifies the belief that they were 
taken away, by the conviction that they were giving the 
last and highest testimony of being followers of Him who 
died for all. 

The age of martyrdom — of martyrdom of this kind — 
has gone by ; there is now little or no external persecution ; 
nor is this phase of erring and sinful humanity likely to 
reappear. We may still imagine cases in which we must 
peril, or even cast away life, for our friends ; but they sel- 
dom occur in fact. Does this text therefore belong only 
to the past ? Obviously this is not altogether so. For all 
may, now and always, look up to this as to a moral standard ; 
may ask of themselves, if they have become ready to obey 
this command, if the need of obedience should recur. And 
thus, as a test and measure of character, to be applied by 
introspection, it remains, and always will remain. But is 
this all? 

The answer to this question we have some hesitation in 
stating, because it may seem to stand in absolute antagonism 
to the whole course of the world's thought and life. For the 
answer must needs be, that this text, this command, this in- 
struction, is at this moment given to all men ; that it will 
be so given to the end of the world and the end of eternity ; 
and that it therefore forms a part of the eternal Word of 
God ; that it is given to angels as well as to men ; and that 
it is obeyed and carried out into actual effect by every man, 
in every hour and every moment in which he is making 
any genuine improvement in his moral condition ; and that 
a simple and unreserved obedience to this law is an ab- 
solute and an inevitable condition for all true progress in 
regeneration. 

In the literal and obvious sense of the verses we have 



260 DEATH AND LIFE. 

quoted above, our Lord refers to himself as exhibiting that 
proof of perfect love ; as laying down his life for his friends ; 
and it is plain that the command to us to do the like, which 
is nowhere expressed in these very words, is implied only in 
the general requirement that we should " follow him" ; that 
we should take up our cross and follow him ; that we should 
love one another, even as he has loved us. 

The Christian Church in all ages, and with all sects, has 
acknowledged that Jesus Christ died for mankind. It is 
impossible to be a Christian in any sense of the word, and 
deny this. But this universal admission is importantly 
qualified by its interpretation. Here we find no uniform- 
ity. There are those who hold that his death satisfied 
eternal justice as an infinite punishment for sin, and so 
averted that punishment from those for whose benefit and 
pardon it was permitted to operate. There are those who 
hold that it is profitable to us only as an example how a 
good man can love others, and consent to suffer if it will 
help them. Between these erroneous extremes there are 
very many grades and forms of belief. But if the death of 
Christ for mankind is, in any form or any sense, held up to 
us as an example, the first thing for us to do is to under- 
stand that example ; for this is an indispensable prerequisite 
for following it. That is, we must learn what his death re- 
ally was, that we may next learn what imitation of his death 
lies within our duty. 

It would seem to have been a death of extreme suffering. 
In the garden of Gethsemane, a short time before it took 
place, and when the plans were laid and even then begin- 
ning to mature which were to lead to his condemnation and 
death, he exhibits an intensity of sorrow that is perhaps 
without a parallel. He prayed to his Father ; and his 
prayer was, " Remove this cup from me." And the narra- 
tive tells that an angel appeared, strengthening him ; and 



DEATH AND LIFE. 261 

then it adds, after this strengthening from heaven, " Being 
in agony, he prayed more earnestly ; and his sweat was as 
it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." 

It may be hoped that no one ever read these lines with- 
out feeling that they depicted the last extremity of suffering ; 
nor without remembering that it was suffering voluntarily 
endured for the good of others. The Christian Church has 
always said this ; and has always called upon eloquence 
and poetry and art to commemorate this agony, and sanctify 
themselves by doing what they could to impress this solemn 
scene upon the minds and hearts of men. 

Assuredly this was well. Possibly the suggestion may 
be appropriate, and may be pardoned, that if in these days, 
and in this neighborhood, this great event is seldom the 
theme either of words or of art, and far more seldom than 
once the topic of religious exhortation or remembrance, a 
part of this change may have arisen from a diminution in 
religious zeal, and a weaker sense of the worth of that great 
act, and of the love by which it was wrought. 

But it is also true, that there has always been, and is now 
everywhere in Christendom, a very great error concerning 
this event. The universal apprehension was and is, that the 
prayer and the suffering of our Lord in Gethsemane re- 
ferred to his approaching death upon the cross. This is an 
absolute, almost an infinite error. And there are obvious 
considerations which lead so directly to this conclusion, that 
it seems strange the error should not have been distinctly 
pointed out. 

What was there in the near approach of that death, 
which could cause or explain that intensity of agony ? It 
was to be an ignominious and a painful death ; and both in 
a high degree. But what was the ignominy to him, who 
knew the truth, and must have been lifted by it far above 
the plane of thought of those who inflicted and witnessed 



262 DEATH AND LIFE. 

his death ? Even then crowds around him were filled with 
the deepest sympathy and admiration ; for there followed 
him to Calvary " a great company of people and of women 
which also bewailed and lamented him." What was, to him, 
the robe thrown over him in mockery ? what the crown of 
thorns, when he knew that he was ascending to sit for ever 
on the right hand of God, and to possess all power in 
heaven and in earth ? Did it ever occur to any Christian to 
think of our Lord as disgraced by the manner of his death ? 
And yet all that we know, and infinitely more, he knew 
also. For if he foresaw his approaching death with a dis- 
tinctness that made him suffer thus, he must have foreseen 
its accompaniments and its consequences. 

Nor was the pain of that death so excessive. Crucifixion 
was doubtless among the most torturing forms of capital 
punishment ; but this was mainly because it involved a long 
and always deepening suffering. But Jesus Christ died 
comparatively soon, and escaped that extremity of pain 
which fell upon those who were crucified with him. How 
many of his followers suffered afterwards for their faith in 
him ; and some of them, the very death which he died, with 
added circumstances of torment. And yet, when we read 
the authentic statements of their death, in some instances at 
least, we do not mourn with them, but we exult with them. 
We see that the mind conquered grief and pain ; and that 
they were borne upward on the wings of peace. But every 
support and relief which they had, he must have had, and 
a thousand-fold more. 

Is it then true that the Christian Church has been mis- 
taken to this hour in supposing that Christ suffered in Geth- 
semane as severely as that description indicates ? Far from 
it ; so far, that the agony of our Lord was alike beyond 
human endurance and human imagination. It was all 
that suffering could be. It was infinite. And it was 



DEATH AND LIFE. 263 

borne only because a divine almightiness within sustained 
the humanity without. 

The mistake of the Christian Church has not been here. 
But they have not known what suffering could cause his 
agony, except that anticipation of death upon the cross; 
and in their ignorance, they have referred this suffering to 
that cause. This was their error. 

The suffering of that hour was not one of anticipation 
and fear, but a very present and terrible reality. The cup 
which our Lord prayed to his Father to remove from him, 
was one of which at that moment he was drinking. The 
agony which prompted him to pray "yet more earnestly," 
was at that moment rending his heart in twain. The 
bloody drops of sweat which fell to the ground were the 
signs of a toil, a struggle, a combat, he was at that moment 
passing through. And the death of Christ, which wrought 
for us infinite blessing, and was to him infinite pain, was 
the death he was enduring from the first moment of rational 
and conscious life, and of which the death upon the cross 
was but the end. And this perpetual death is that which 
must be ours also. 

All that was external in our Lord, was the same in him 
that it is in us. By our external and by his is meant, all 
that is seen and heard and known by the senses ; by this 
word is also meant the external mind, or the external of 
the mind ; and in the broadest sense it includes all that 
we live in outwardly and apparently, and also all that 
this outward and apparent life springs immediately from. 
That is, it includes all feelings, motives, or emotions, and 
all thoughts, opinions, and sentiments, which move, and 
govern, and give form and color to our outward life. It 
includes therefore, first, all that we do ; and next, all that 
we spontaneously feel that prompts us to action, and all that 
we usually mean when we speak of our Life. Within all 



264 DEATH AND LIFE. 

this is our inner or internal nature ; and so far within this 
internal that it is beyond our reach and our conscious- 
ness, and therefore beyond injury from us, is an inmost, 
which we may call the inmost of the mind, or the inmost 
mind. Here a divine influence dwells, and works. It 
dwells there as the beginning and foundation of all our 
life ; and it works to bring the external man into conform- 
ity with itself, that as it flows forth, and through the in- 
ternal fills the external, it may do this without perversion 
and degradation. In, by, and through this inmost our 
Father in Heaven operates upon us to lead us to himself. 

So it was with bur Lord, but with this difference. His 
inmost was the Father himself. He was there with all his 
infinities. Our Lord was born of a human mother, and 
took from her an external humanity, which, by accumu- 
lated inheritance, had become full of possibilities of evil 
and tendencies to evil. But he did not live through the 
instrumentality of a human father. Through that instru- 
mentality we all live ; and by it the life which is within our 
external is qualified and modified. But the power of the 
highest, directly, and without any medium, overshadowed 
Mary ; and the Almighty was the only father of the child 
she bore ; and therefore was he called Emmanuel, or God 
with us. 

With the first beginning of rational consciousness, or of 
self-directing action, our Lord began to do his work. His 
was the same work in kind which we have to do ; but it 
differed infinitely in degree. The work was, to permit the 
divine within to control the external human, and bring it 
into harmony with itself. We can do this in our degree, 
because free-will, free-agency, and personal liberty of choice 
are a part and a first effect of the life which flows into our 
inmost from our Father in heaven. So it was with Jesus 
Christ ; excepting that these were infinite and perfect with 



DEATH AND LIFE. 265 

him. Divine Providence watches over us always to see 
that we are not tempted beyond our strength, to provide that 
evils shall not be aroused and inflamed within us which are 
stronger than we can successfully combat with the degree 
of liberty and power which can flow into us, if we will but 
use them. The same measure was applied to Jesus Christ. 
To him no evils, or no assaults from the hells, were admit- 
ted more than he could combat and conquer. But his lib- 
erty was perfect, for the life within him was Almighty ; and 
therefore he could conquer all ; and therefore all were ad- 
mitted to assault him. All did assault him, and all were 
subdued. 

We mean by this, that from early childhood he was 
tempted by the uprisal of evil after evil ; the milder first, 
and, as he grew stronger, the more severe. At length, 
when he was about thirty years old, and his humanity had 
reached its full maturity, he entered upon his public minis- 
try. There appears to have been an immediate prepara- 
tion, in a combat with influences which came from nearly 
the bottom of the abyss. They are symbolically described 
as the temptations in the wilderness. Probably he did pass 
those forty days in solitude. Possibly the temptations 
which beset him assumed to his humanity the forms set 
forth. But this is not material. What we know is, that 
the natural propensity of man to rule over others, to love 
himself, and to worship himself and trust in himself and in 
his own strength, instead of God and his might, all were 
stirred from their profoundest depths. And when that com- 
bat was over, and the devils were subdued by whom those 
evils were animated, he was ready to enter upon the three 
years of ministration which ended in his death. During 
these three years, these and similar temptations continually 
arose, and were continually baffled ; and they grew in in- 
tensity until the close ; grew until the intolerable anguish 
23 



266 DEATH AND LIFE. 

found utterance in those words of despair, "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me." And continued perhaps 
until that last word was uttered, " It is finished." 

How painful these combats were, he may perhaps begin 
— faintly and far off — to apprehend, who knows what it is 
to struggle with an evil of which it is felt that indulgence is 
death, while resistance to the burning desire seems more 
painful than death. All who have made any real advance 
in goodness know something of this. But no one, nor all to- 
gether, know it as he knew it. He was " a man of sorrows, 
and acquainted with grief," for he sounded its depths. All 
that all humanity can be called upon to do, he did. All 
that all humanity can be called upon to bear, he bore. 

The propensities to evil, which Jesus Christ thus resisted 
and overcame, did not enter into and compose a part of his 
human nature. They composed it ; it consisted of them ; 
for the fulness of time had come ; and by this was meant, 
that the accumulated succession of evils had filled full the 
human nature of Mary ; so that all were there, and there- 
fore when all of them were subdued, none would be left to 
come anew with unconquered force. 

And now we may begin to see how he laid down his life. 
With every propensity to sin which he rebuked and over- 
came, so much of his natural inherited life departed, and so 
much of the opposite divine life descended and took its 
place. And in so far his life was regenerated or born 
again ; and in so far the external was united with the 
divine. And this went on ; and still and always onward, 
with every new temptation and every new victory ; until all 
was accomplished, and all his natural and assumed life was 
voluntarily laid down, and in the stead a new life put on, 
which was divine. When this work was all accomplished, 
he was wholly regenerate or born again ; for he had laid 
down the whole of his natural life for others. The Son of 



DEATH AND LIFE. 267 

Man had become the Son of God; the external was one 
with the internal ; and our Lord became the Father clothed 
with a divine humanity. 

Thus he laid down his life for his friends ; for us, for all 
who are willing to become his friends. Thus he manifested 
his infinite love. Thus with his own hand he wrought sal- 
vation for us, by making it for ever possible that we might 
do so also, in our way and measure. 

How the conquest of the spirits of evil by our Lord fa- 
cilitates our conquest of them ; or rather, how the condition 
of the human race, and the laws which by the necessity 
of order govern progress, made this conquest of them at 
that time and in that way essential to the salvation of the 
human race, we do not propose to consider now. This topic 
has been alluded to elsewhere. But the remark may not 
be inappropriate to repeat in this connection, that only 
when the natural darkness of the mind is beginning to 
break away, do we look upon salvation as a reality, or as 
needed. And then, at first, we are startled at the idea of 
a scheme, or a system, for God to work by. It seems to 
question his power or his wisdom, and to impart to him 
somewhat of human limitation and infirmity. But we ought, 
very soon, to be able to see that God works always by means, 
in order to give to his instruments the happiness of making 
happy ; and that he works always according to the laws of 
order, because perfect wisdom cannot but know and pre- 
serve order. For proof of the fact, we may look through 
the universe, physical, intellectual, or moral, we may look 
into ourselves and abroad upon society, and we shall find 
everywhere that the power which governs the world, what- 
ever it may be, works by means, and according to laws, or 
an order or system or plan, or, if we like the word, a 
scheme. Mere logic, then, should tell us that it is not 
rational to suppose that God works out man's salvation with- 



268 DEATH AND LIFE. 

out any system, and by the mere effort of irresistible will. 
There is indeed but one rational question, and it is, what 
are the means and what the method which he uses. But 
let us return to our more immediate subject, which is the 
duty that the perpetual death of our Lord, as our exem- 
plar, lays upon us. 

Our external life; all that we feel to be our life and 
have power over ; all that belongs to us individually and 
specifically as our own ; all this life is composed of similar 
tendencies to evil with those which composed the Lord's 
natural life, and were overcome by him. With this there 
is mingled in all men more or less of natural good, that 
may become genuine and abiding good by being made 
spiritual good. But the great purpose for which we live, 
is to put away, step by step, to-day as we can, to-morrow 
as we can, the evil elements of natural and inherited life, 
and receive in their stead corresponding but opposite ele- 
ments of spiritual life. These elements of a good life are 
in their origin divine ; and they are only modified into ad- 
aptation to us, by the spiritual beings through whom they 
flow. They seek for ever to flow into us from God out of 
heaven, and do so flow in when the hindering antagonism 
of evil is removed. If, for example, we resist and over- 
come a selfish love of the world, or the love and worship of 
self in any form, we are not left lifeless and loveless, for 
the love of the neighbor and the love of the Lord flow in 
and fill and animate the heart. 

What we have to do, therefore, is to lay down our life. 
To lay it down each day and hour ; to know, when we feel 
an evil element of life striving within us, that it has come 
forth within our reach, not to be indulged, and by indul- 
gence vivified and strengthened, but to be resisted, and 
slain, and buried. 

Our Lord said in reference to his own death : " This life 



DEATH AND LIFE. 269 

I lay down of myself. No man taketh it from me. But I 
have power to lay it down and to take it again." This 
also is true of us. Xo man can take from us this first 
life of our souls ; this natural and unregenerate life ; nor 
can time, nor chance, nor anything in heaven, earth, or hell, 
take it from us ; nor can death itself take it from us ; for if 
we go into the other world before this life has died within 
us, we carry it thither, and it lives on there. But we have 
power over it ourselves. We have power to lay it clown 
if we will. And then we shall take it again. We shall 
not take what we laid down and be again what we were 
before, but something very different. " He that loveth his 
own life shall lose it ; but he that hateth his life in this 
world, the same shall keep it unto life eternal." So He 
laid down his life, the life in this world which he hated, 
and against which he was combating until the end ; and as 
he laid it down, he took it again, glorified and made divine 
by perfect conjunction with the life within him. 

This view, or theory, may seem to be enthusiastic, or fan- 
ciful, fit for recluse and meditative persons only, if for any, 
but incapable of being applied to actual life ; but it is in 
fact nothing more than a systematic exposition and develop- 
ment of truths which belong to the religious common sense of 
the world. Does not that acknowledge that there is much 
of evil and suffering and degradation which would disap- 
pear if self-restraint and purity, and the love of the neigh- 
bor and the love of God were stronger and more operative 
in daily life ? Does not that say continually that sin must 
be checked, and the ordinary habits and tastes and motives 
and purposes of men be more conformed to the laws of 
God ? And that then there will be more order, and good 
conduct, and happiness ? Does not that tell us that the 
thing for each one to do in the furtherance of this general 
end is to deny to himself the indulgence of sinful and selfish 
23* 



270 DEATH AND LIFE. 

propensities, and thus gradually subdue and suppress them ? 
And does it not assure us that this may be done with the 
help of God, and that as we profit by this help, and cease to 
do evil and learn to do well, we draw nearer and nearer to 
Him ? All these are simple and very practical things ; 
and no one with any desire to become religious would say 
that any of them could be denied, or thought to be new or 
strange. But if these things are indeed truths, or laws, 
they must, with others like themselves, constitute the sys- 
tem of God's providence and man's duty. Nor is it en- 
thusiasm, or mere fantasy, which asserts that they are all 
most real and vital truths ; and that they spring from God's 
own order, and are therefore capable of a positive statement, 
of an examination into their origin, and of an arrangement 
and annunciation as laws of a system which has its own 
unity and completness. 

The end of it all is, that our natural life is full of pro- 
clivities to evil. That we may lay them down, and lay it 
down so far as it is composed of them, and then shall re- 
ceive the opposite life, which consists of. tendencies to the 
opposite good things. 

As this is the command of God to all, so it is that which 
he is always seeking to help men to do. For this purpose 
he permits all the sorrows which seem to lie in ambush by 
the pathways of life, and spring out upon the wayfarer 
at every step. For this he permits them. We call them 
" the sorrows of life," and it is an excellent name. They 
are precisely the sorrows, the cares, the disappointments 
and losses, the weariness, the depression, the despair, of life ; 
of this natural life, which bears them as a tree its fruits. 
And however reluctantly and therefore imperfectly we may 
do it, we can hardly prevent the mere law of association 
from presenting this natural life to us as productive of sor- 
row, and full of that which should be regretted and dis- 



DEATH AND LIFE. 271 

liked. If only this is done, it is not much ; but even this 
loosens the iron grasp of sin and selfishness, and will pre- 
vent our falling to the lowest depth, if it cannot make us 
consent to rise out of the abyss. But it may be and is 
meant to be the beginning of much more ; of an insight 
into the possibility of exchanging this life, which is so pro- 
lific of sorrow, for another which shall make us better and 
happier. And with this insight our eyes will be opened, 
and turned towards the light ; and as we approach it, it will 
grow upon us ; and in sorrow itself we shall find comfort 
and hope. 

But let us return to the words of our Lord, and observe 
that we should be ready not merely to lay down our lives, 
but to do this for our friends. One immediate, obvious, 
and most important application of the precept requires us 
to abstain from any indulgence of an evil which could be 
injurious to those who stand near us in any relation of life. 
This word, friend, has a wide meaning. It will include 
many more specific relations. Embraced within its scope 
are father or mother, and brother or sister or child, and 
husband or wife, as well as all those whom any business or 
social connection brings near to us. And in its widest 
sense it includes all who are our brethren because they are 
the children of our Father in heaven. And who is there 
that will not find opportunity, in every hour of every day, to 
lay down somewhat of his life for some one of these ? Is it 
anger, or injustice, which threatens to cloud the sunlight of 
home, and cast asunder and build a barrier between those 
who should be in kind conjunction, or weaken or pervert 
the parents' influence over the child, and nourish wrath 
where love should be ? Is it hatred, that cannot forgive, 
and enjoys the sullen indulgence of malignant purpose, 
until that purpose can ripen into action ? Is it discontent, 
which sees in Providence only neglect or indifference or 



272 DEATH AND LIFE. 

partiality, and turns the very daylight into darkness for all 
within its reach, by unavailing complaint and resistance ? 
Is it envy, that refuses to be glad only because another is, 
and would rend another's good away, or pull him down 
from his elevation, only because it is not ours also ? Is it 
the kindred sin of covetousness, that desires whatever is 
another's with unhealthy wish that would steal it if it could ; 
for to steal is only to carry coveting into act, and to covet is 
only to steal with the heart instead of the hands ? Or is it 
that dishonesty which is born of envy and coveting and greed, 
the foul child of foul parents, that prompts us to cheat an- 
other, and in so doing to cheat ourselves far more ? Is it 
that cold and hard self-enjoyment, that neither takes from 
others nor gives to them, but lives in the midst of its own, 
a life of barren selfishness ? Or which of the other myriad 
forms of self-love or of sin stands this hour between us and 
justice or kindness to others. Whichever we can see it to be, 
so much of our natural life has come forth into prominence ; 
it has revealed itself to us, if we will see the thing as it is. 
It has come forth now, that we may pluck it out and cast it 
away, as a member which it is far more profitable for us to 
lose than to carry with us into hell. There it is, our life. 
And we must put it away, must lay it down, that the barrier 
between us and our friends may separate us no longer ; 
that we may go to them in truth, in justice, in kindness, 
usefulness, and love ; that we may do for them that very 
thing which this sin urges us not to do for them ; that we 
may lay down our life for our friends. 

It is for this very reason that we have friends. All the 
relations of life, all its incidents and circumstances, nay, all 
things whatsoever, are for this very end. We are, while 
here, as is often said, and can hardly be said too often, at 
school. All our surroundings, from our earliest to our latest 
breath, are exercises assigned to us. Most of us are as 



DEATH AND LIFE. 273 

ignorant, or, if not ignorant, as thoughtless of this, as chil- 
dren are, who go wearily to school to learn the task of 
which the purpose and the need are drawn from a distant 
future. So it is with us in all the doings of life. We can- 
not stay out of this school ; it has no recesses nor vacations ; 
for every moment offers its exercise, and the manner in 
which we do it is recorded for ever, upon our own hearts. 
Therefore we have friends of various kinds, standing in 
a vast multiplicity of relations ; and these all so formed 
and directed by Providence, that they are to us, all of them, 
instruments of orderly, continuous, and well-adjusted disci- 
pline ; and when they cease to be this, they cease to exist. 
Quality after quality is brought up by these relations to be 
tested by the truth, and if good confirmed by exercise, and 
if bad suppressed by denial. Faculty after faculty comes 
up to be employed because we shall want it through eter- 
nity, or paralyzed by resistance that it may not through 
eternity be, with its demand for exercise, an abiding curse. 
In the manner in which all this is interwoven with the web 
of life, there is infinite wisdom. "We recognize the wisdom 
of God, somewhat, in the creation and procedure of the 
great nature which spreads as a universe around us. But 
there is also a wisdom which only itself could measure, in 
the exact care for the culture of the nature within us, in 
the patient and unresting and all-embracing foresight which 
orders all the minutest events and least details of daily 
experience, so that they may all converge towards one 
purpose. Moses was placed in the cleft of a rock as the 
Lord went by, and saw Him after he had passed. From 
the rocky clefts in which we dwell, we too sometimes see, 
and might often see, the providence and love that guided 
the past. But if we could discern it as it is, while tending- 
us with inexpressible love and . watching every footstep 
and every circumstance of life, we should be blinded with 
intolerable light. 



274 DEATH AND LIFE. 

For this purpose we have friends ; and for a double pur- 
pose. They afford us opportunities to lay down a life 
which is death and take up a life which cannot die. And 
we give them, in turn, the opportunities and means of ex- 
ercising all the good qualities which they possess. We let 
them love us ; we help them to be just, and benevolent, and 
grateful, and useful ; and this is the greatest good we can do 
them. We make it easier for them to do the very thing 
for us which we do for them ; and so the blessing comes 
back to us ; and so our Father connects his children into 
one family, and seeks to enfold them all into oneness with 
himself. 

All this is to help us to ascend towards the love and wis- 
dom which are ever coming down to meet us. We have 
friends, and all these exercises of the soul are wrought 
through our relations to them, because we could not perform 
them if we were not aided by personal relations and feel- 
ings and inducements ; for we could not, at first, see or love 
what is true, or what is good, excepting as it clothes itself 
in this or that particular instance of justice or benefit to our 
neighbor. But when we have seen this and dealt with it 
as it was intended that we should, a new evidence and a 
new effect of the uplifting of our souls comes to us, and it 
comes in our power to recognize goodness and truth, in 
themselves, as our friends. We have learnt that nothing 
else in our friends was truly friendly to us ; that these in 
them made them our friends ; and the step is not then diffi- 
cult which puts us on the height whence we can see good- 
ness and truth themselves as our friends, and more our 
friends than any persons can be. 

Then we lay down our life for these new friends in a new 
way. We do not ask to whom it will do good, that we should 
cease to do evil ; still less do we ask whose hand will return 
to us the good we give to him. We have no fear of these 



DEATH AND LIFE. 275 

questions. If they come to us, and with evil intent, they 
are disarmed, for an answer is ready for them. We cannot 
deny ourselves in what is evil, without making ourselves a 
medium of good to others. They may become better be- 
cause we are better. We may never know who they are to 
whom we shall be useful, or precisely how we help them ; 
nor do we curiously ask ; for we are none the less certain 
that we shall help them, and that all the good we do will 
return to us a thousand-fold. We know this, because we 
have begun to know something of the true origin, and na- 
ture, and efficacy of the true and the good. We know that 
in their primal forms of wisdom and love, both infinite, both 
together one, they constitute God. That, proceeding from 
him, they constitute and form and fill the universe. That 
in them and by them he forms and fills, not only the uni- 
verse around us, but that he forms us and fills us with life, 
which is his life in its origin, and remains his life after it be- 
comes our life, so far as it is unperverted. And when we 
have this knowledge, what is there for us to desire, but that 
we may lay down for truth and goodness, these friends of 
our souls, all of our fife that opposes them ? This death we 
desire to die. 

Death is of three kinds ; or, rather, the word death 
has three meanings. One is the death of evil within our 
souls, that we may become good ; another is the death of 
our souls under the influence of confirmed evil ; either of 
these is actual death, or the loss of a life. But the third 
meaning, the common meaning, the death of the body, 
is only metaphorical, and, so far as the soul is concerned, 
wholly unreal, and only a thing of form and appearance ; 
for this death neither is nor causes any loss of any life 
whatever. It cannot be too much insisted on, that nat- 
ural death does not even discontinue or suspend bodily 
life, but only changes the form and scene of it. Who 



276 DEATH AND LIFE. 

ever thought an insect died, because it made of the outer 
parts of its body a shroud, and a cradle, and rose from 
this in a new body, which had always lain concealed within 
the old one ? The error which deems death an extinction 
of life is inevitable, if a natural view only is taken of the 
subject. For, according to this view, the act or moment of 
departure is a vast and sudden and total change. We cease 
to be what we have been, and become nothing ; or if any- 
thing, something totally different ; and therefore all the ac- 
cumulated changes which can occur in the course of the 
longest life are, if added together, nothing in comparison 
with the final change, when we bid farewell to the world 
itself, and to everything we recognized as body and as 
substance. 

The truth is the precise opposite of this. The change at 
death is no doubt important in itself; and very important as 
it closes one scene and one mode of discipline. But merely 
as change, or merely for the difference which it produces 
at once in our state and feelings, it is comparatively slight. 
Whereas the other change, the change in the spirit, the 
change which takes place when we die to sin, and begin to 
live to good, this is one of which we cannot measure or im- 
agine the importance. We are indeed born again; and 
born into a new world; born into new views, feelings, 
opinions, purposes, desires, and relations, in respect to every 
person and thing which life presents to us. The material 
world, and the persons whom we encounter, are the same. 
But the difference in us makes their relation to us, and the 
aspect they bear to us, perfectly new. When we die natu- 
rally, we wake just what we were when we slept ; for the 
act of death has no more effect upon us of this kind than a 
night's sleep. After the labor of every day which we pass 
in this world, we go to our beds for rest, and there body and 
soul slumber. If we die that night, the body never wakens 



DEATH AND LIFE. 277 

again ; but the soul does, and in the same state in which 
it went to sleep. And it wakes in the same spiritual body 
which once gave life to the natural, material body, and is 
now delivered from that body; and this spiritual body, 
formed of most real spiritual substance, finds itself in a spir- 
itual world formed of similar substance, which is adapted to 
the spiritual body through its organs of sense in exactly the 
same way in which the former world was adapted to the 
former body and its organs of sense. At first, therefore, 
scarcely any change is apparent. Afterwards changes come, 
perhaps in a long series ; and end in putting the man in his 
true place for eternity. In the end, the change is wholly 
inconceivable ; but at first, it is little more than nothing. 

Our whole view of natural death is exactly wrong ; ex- 
actly the opposite of the truth ; and the reason is, that the 
natural state of man is exactly the opposite of that for 
which he was created. The natural man has many re- 
sources and faculties which the mere animal has not. He 
has these that they may be employed in purposes and uses 
which would be impossible to the animal ; that he may by 
their help recognize, understand, and believe spiritual truth, 
and be spiritually-minded. But when these faculties are 
not so employed, — however otherwise cultivated and ex- 
panded, — the natural man is none the better for merely 
possessing them or for this misuse of them. He is no bet- 
ter than an animal in his belief, his state, or his hope. This 
world is all to him ; and all belief in another, and all regard 
for another, seem to him mere illusion and folly, whether he 
says so to himself and to others, or uses different language. 
He may indeed, and generally does, under various influen- 
ces and by the utterance of words expressive of different 
sentiments^ persuade others, and often himself, that he has 
faith which an animal has not. But it is a mere mistake. 
And the proof of it is, that he looks upon death just as 
24 



278 DEATH AND LIFE. 

an animal would look upon his own death, if he had intelli- 
gence enough to comprehend that event. 

This is now probably, and has been for ages, the prevail- 
ing, although most certainly not the only existing, view of 
death. And hence the blackness, and mourning, and fune- 
real wail, and the distress and woe, which generally accom- 
pany — what ? A transfer from a temporary and prepara- 
tory stage of existence into that other for which we have 
been preparing ; a going home from school. 

There can be no greater error than this ; because it is 
exactly total. But Divine Providence permits this falsity 
to result from the natural causes of it, and overrules it for 
good purposes. It is as well as it is inevitable that they 
who are in a merely natural state of mind should remain 
under the influence of this falsity. All the terrors with 
which it invests the passing from one world to another are, 
for such persons, wholesome terrors. They keep them, on 
the whole, in a teachable state as far as may be. And 
when one begins to arise out of this state, the fearfulness 
of death begins to transfer itself to its true object ; to that 
death which is another name for confirmed sinfulness. The 
early terrors, which alone could once restrain from unre- 
buked sin by the fear of punishment, now cling about sin 
itself, and oppose the wish and the thought as well as the 
act of sin. The fear of death is gradually transformed intp 
the fear of sin. At the end of the process, the original 
state of mind in relation to death is exactly reversed. It is 
seen that what we at first call death is only an appearance, 
a symbol, a metaphor ; that it wears that aspect of horror 
merely to cultivate in the mind feelings which should be 
transferred to another death. We know that, as all true life 
is divine in its origin and character, all life opposed to this 
must be death ; and from that moment our strongest de- 
sire is, that this death may itself die. 



DEATH AND LIFE. 279 

As we pass through the series of changes which consti- 
tutes progress, we constantly find old meanings and old views 
cast off, and new ones developed from within. This is true 
of almost all our mental possessions ; and of none is it more 
true than of our idea of death. Beginning with understand- 
ing this as the painful extinction of life, about which all 
unimaginable distress dimly gathers, we gradually advance 
until we forget this meaning in the new view that presents 
to us our natural and evil life as a living death. Then we 
learn that we may lay down this life, or this death, if we 
will, and that genuine life will take its place. Then we 
desire to die ; to die the death of the righteous. The wish 
is the common attendant of our daily life, to lay down all of 
that life which is hostile to goodness and to God. The 
sense that nothing else is so desirable as this, that nothing 
else will make us so happy, grows upon us ; and we seek 
nothing more than to die daily. But we seek thus to die, 
because thus to die is to live ; and as the Divine Providence 
permits us to gratify this wish, permits us to see, with hum- 
ble confidence and hope, the death of our souls die out and 
life gradually take its place, there is formed within us the 
habit of looking even upon the death of the body, not as the 
end, but as the beginning of life. 

It is said in the Bible that hell is " upside down." These 
words indicate and illustrate a universal law. Evil has no 
independent origin of its own ; it is only good perverted ; 
" upside down." For example, self-love is good, if it be 
subordinate to the love of the neighbor, for then it prompts 
us to take care of ourselves for the sake of others. The 
love for others is the directing or controlling love, while 
self-love is the subservient hand or foot. But when self- 
love directs and controls, it is selfishness. Then the love 
of others is subordinate and subservient, for we love others 
only for the sake of ourselves. Then the love of self is the 



280 DEATH AND LIFE. 

head, and the love of others is the hand or foot ; and the 
moral man, which is the real man, is " upside down." 

All this would follow from the fact that evil has no in- 
dependent origin, and this again follows from the fact that 
there is but one God, one source of life and being, one con- 
trolling power, and that infinitely good. Hence, in the 
Bible, which is the word of God, almost everything men- 
tioned has two distinct and antagonistic senses ; because 
almost everything may be " upside down." One sense 
the word bears when it presents to the mind a good thing, 
or, in other words, the thing unperverted from that state 
in which it flows forth or is created ; the other sense it 
bears when falsified or perverted or bad. This is em- 
, phatically true of death. Sometimes this word means the 
" second death," or eternal evil, or the extinction of true 
spiritual life. But as frequently it is used in a good sense, 
and means either the suppression of sin within us, or 
the end of this life and the beginning of a better. Hence, 
in their spiritual sense, very many of the passages which 
speak of death and the grave relate to the resurrection and 
to life eternal. This is the sense which the science of 
correspondence will teach us to give to these passages, and 
the sense in which angels read them. 

Nor is this distinction and opposition between these 
meanings, or this correspondence, arbitrary or accidental. 
They are founded upon the essential and eternal nature of 
things. The death of anything, by itself considered, is the 
end of that thing, and nothing more. The quality of the 
death must then depend upon the quality of the thing that 
ceases to be, and of the new thing that takes its place. That 
which dies at the death of the sinful and unregenerate is 
not his life, for that goes with him, untouched and unaffect- 
ed. But there dies that hope of reform and amendment 
and of radical change which belongs to this world ; and 



DEATH AND LIFE. 281 

therefore to the natural man death is indeed the horrid 
thing it seems, but for other reasons than those which 
make it seem so dreadful to him. But when one who has 
done his work here passes by death from temptation and 
struggle into peace, death is precisely the opposite of the 
thing that it is and seems to be to the natural man. 

Hence, if the process of repentance, reform, and regenera- 
tion is permitted to go forward with us, we reach at last 
that view of death which is the precise opposite of the view 
with which we began. And we have reached it by the 
gradual death of that life of evil which we have laid down. 
Then this habit of regarding death as the only gate of life, 
attaches itself, as has been said, to our view of natural 
death. We have no wish to hasten its coming before the 
best and fitting hour ; we have no wish to terminate either 
the duties or the joys, or to escape prematurely from the 
pains of our earthly life. We would have all of them go 
on and do their proper work, until that work is done. But 
the portals of the other world are no longer shrouded in 
midnight blackness. The truth has made them translucent, 
and they are radiant with the light within. And at those 
doors stand beautiful and living beings, servants of their 
Lord and ours, who keep them closed as yet while we are 
drawing near, but look upon us peacefully and lovingly, 
and are ready to open them the moment that they may. 
And we also are ready and willing. 

Then do we know that what we once regarded as the 
greatest of evils, is in fact the greatest good. And we es- 
teem it a proof and illustration of the total aberration of our 
natural conceptions from all truth, that, while they pre- 
vailed, death was the great terror which seemed to include 
all others, and to surpass all others. For now we are pre- 
pared to learn that the death which we are commanded and 
enabled to die of ourselves, this death of a false life, is the 
24* 



282 DEATH AND LIFE. 

only preparation for an abiding happiness ; and that the 
death of the body will introduce us to this happiness. 
Then, as that happiness is the highest, so the physical 
death that bears us into that world where it can exist, is 
gilded by it as clouds are by the sun beyond them, and 
is beautiful. 

What is this highest happiness ? Let us ask this ques- 
tion even of those words of our Lord upon which we have 
been commenting. It has been said that we have friends, 
who were made so by being instruments and mediums of 
truth and good, and that we had them, that we might begin 
with loving our friends for the truth and good that is in 
them, and so learn to love the truth and the good for their 
own sakes. It remains to be said, that truth and good, wis- 
dom and love, lead us back to their first cause, to Him from 
whom they are, and who gives them to us, and bring Him 
before us as the object of all our love, as our best friend, 
and therefore as Him for whom we should each day and 
hour lay down our life. 

Our earliest view of the relation between God and man 
tells us that he creates, and we live thereby ; that he com- 
mands, and we obey ; he gives, and we receive. This is 
true ; and it is an excellent foundation to build upon ; but 
as we build, and as we build, ascend, we find that one of 
the things he gives us is the power of giving back to him. 
He creates us, in the first place, as has been often said, 
forms of life, and then he imparts life to us ; and the life 
he gives is his own life, and consists, as that does, of love 
and wisdom. His love and wisdom become in us, ours. 
The one becomes in us everything of will, or emotion, or 
choice, or feeling, or affection, or desire. The other becomes 
in us everything of opinion, or thought, or belief, or under- 
standing. He thus creates and thus preserves us, that we 
may be happy by receiving from him also the happiness of 



DEATH AND LIFE. 283 

love and wisdom. He does this because he loves to do it ; 
because doing it gratifies his love; because doing it con- 
stitutes his active life and his happiness. Being infinite in 
all things, into a boundless universe of infinite diversity he 
is always pouring fresh life, activity, and joy ; present 
through its whole extent, watching its whole movements, 
governing all its events. And his infinite blessedness con- 
sists in the infinite happiness which it gives him to do this. 
To state our proposition very simply, he loves us, and there- 
fore it makes him happy to make us happy. And there- 
fore we may give to God some return for what he gives to 
us. For he cannot make us love good unless we consent, 
and co-operate with him; and if he does not make us^love 
good, he cannot make us happy ; and if he cannot make us 
happy, so much of what might be present in his own happi- 
ness is not there. But if he can make us good, and therefore 
happy, by so much more is his own happiness filled out 
and perfected. And we may help him to do this. Every 
parent and every child may understand this. For every 
parent knows, from the inmost depths of his own nature, 
that all creation has no gift for him like that his own child 
offers, when that child grows in goodness and in happiness 
every day under the love and fostering care of his parent. 
And every child feels, although he may not rationally com- 
prehend the feeling, that the happiness he gives his parent 
returns to his own heart in joy and gladness. And this is 
but the effect and image of the relation between the Uni- 
versal Father and his Universe. 

The joy that is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
was His joy before it descended from him and became the 
joy of heaven. That repentant sinner, when he cast away 
the evil that had bound him, gave to himself happiness ; 
and he gave it to the angels by whose accepted aid he 
had conquered their enemies and his, and made their life 



284 DEATH AND LIFE. 

of goodness more active and effectual by allowing them to 
do what they always desire to do. He also gave happiness 
to all good men, on earth or in heaven, who saw or knew of 
this victory over evil. But all this happiness and joy, — 
his own, his neighbors', and that of the angels, — all of it 
first existed in transcendent and immeasurable fulness in 
God himself, and from him falling drop by drop, filled the 
finite hearts that opened to receive it. 

When that sinner repented of his sin and put it by re- 
pentance far from him, he laid down so much of his natural 
and evil life. If he repented of it as a sin against God, — 
and there is no other true repentance, — he laid down so 
much of his life for God. It may have been but a begin- 
ning, and but a feeble beginning ; but up through the heav- 
ens went the gladness and the hope, and they stopped not 
until they reached the source whence they and all gladness 
and all hope came down. If it was only true repentance, 
it was done from a spirit of obedience, of worship, and of 
love ; and this spirit returned to God who gave it, and bore 
with it a contribution to His infinite and perfect bliss. 

As it is the end of God's whole providence and the per- 
fect gratification of his infinite love to make men happy, so 
there is but one obstruction to this purpose ; it is sin and 
sinfulness. That is the life of all the hells ; if life it may 
be called which is much more death. The voice of conflict, 
of wailing, or of fear, which wakes and fills the echoes of 
the abyss, is the utterance of sin ; of sin and sorrow ; of 
sin which cannot but cause sorrow ; of sorrow which can 
have no cause but sin. The effect of sin is not always 
direct, immediate, and visible ; through a long chain, sin 
must sometimes operate, and wait long seasons, for the 
unholy thing that cannot but be born of it. So, on the 
other hand, when it is born, men may be unable to point to 
the parent of the sorrow that they feel. And yet certain it 






DEATH AND LIFE. 285 

is, that sin, somewhere, of some person, at some time, was 
the remote, but the efficient and the only cause of the sor- 
row that was not felt until now. 

If happiness be the great good which God seeks to give 
and the great good which it is his happiness to give, it fol- 
lows that sin, which is the one hinderance and opponent to 
the good which God can do, is also the equal opponent to ' 
the blessedness he may enjoy. And if sin springs from 
the fountain of our sinfulness, of our evil life, of our nat- 
ural and unregenerate life, it follows that this evil life is 
the one antagonism to the life and love and blessedness of 
God. Not for his own sake, but for ours, he gives us the 
power to lay down this life. We shall lay it down at every 
step of our advance towards heaven ; constantly in heaven, 
and most constantly in the highest ; for it is the life of 
heaven for ever and for ever to complete the work of lay- 
ing down that earlier and opposing life ; and they who are 
there do this, not for their own sakes, but for His ; for Him 
whom all in heaven have leamt to recognize as their friend, 
and their best friend ; and to recognize His influence in all 
the innumerable friendships which make all heaven har- 
mony and peace. Then at last, created beings learn, that 
the crowning gift of their infinite Lord and Father permits 
them to do for Him that very thing which He did for them ; 
to lay down their life for Him, and take up His life in 
them ; and thus to enlarge His happiness by accepting their 
happiness from Him. 



THE END. 



